Democracy Now! - Protestshttp://www.democracynow.org/topics/protests
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144144Democracy Now! - Protestsen-USDemocracy Now! - ProtestsVIDEO: "We are All Michael Brown" — NYC Parents Whose Kids Were Killed by Police Rally for Justicehttp://www.democracynow.org/blog/2014/8/19/video_we_are_all_michael_brown
tag:democracynow.org,2014-08-19:blog/279ee4 Thanks to Democracy Now! fellows Messiah Rhodes and Anna Özbek for producing this video.
Parents with children killed by police were among those who attended a rally in front of New York City police headquarters on Monday to demand justice in the murder of Michael Brown and similar cases.
&quot;We&#8217;re out here because they&#8217;re killing innocent people in the street, in their homes, like they did to my son, Ramarley,&quot; said Frank Graham.
Ramarley Graham was unarmed when he was shot at close range last February, in front of his six-year-old brother and grandmother, after narcotics officers chased him into his Bronx apartment. Police say Graham was trying to empty a small bag of marijuana into the toilet before he was killed. The officer who shot him was indicted for manslaughter, but a judge reluctantly threw out the indictment in May on procedural grounds. Earlier this year another grand jury chose not to indict the officer a second time.
More than a year has passed since the U.S. Justice Department indicated it may review Graham&#8217;s case. The family says it has no indication federal officials are conducting a full investigation by interviewing witnesses, as is occurring in the case of Michael Brown. On Wednesday, Graham&#8217;s family and supporters plan to deliver thousands of petitions to the U.S. Justice Department and call for a meeting with U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.
Police shootings and misconduct have been monitored locally by groups like the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement and Copwatch , which is also looking into alleged police harassment of Ramsey Orta, who filmed Eric Garner&#8217;s fatal encounter with New York Police in July. Garner died after police placed him in a chokehold and pinned him to the ground while he repeatedly said he couldn&#8217;t breathe. A day after the medical examiner ruled Garner&#8217;s death a homicide, police arrested Orta on weapons charges.
A We Will Not Go Back march calling for justice in the case of Eric Garner is planned for August 23rd and is sponsored by Rev. Al Sharpton&#8217;s National Action Network, the NAACP and local 1199 SEIU , as well as other groups.
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
PROTESTERS : Hands up! Don&#8217;t Shoot! Hands up! Don&#8217;t Shoot! Hands up! Don&#8217;t Shoot! Hands up! Don&#8217;t Shoot! Hands up! Don&#8217;t Shoot!
FRANK GRAHAM : We&#8217;re out here because they&#8217;re killing innocent people in the street and in their home, as they did to my son Ramarley. There&#8217;s what we&#8217;re asking for, for these criminal cops to stop, because they are criminals, because they have these signs all over, &quot;If you see something, say something,&quot; but they don&#8217;t say nothing when they see their buddies beating or killing people. That blue wall is silent.
ANITA NEAL : They did not come to me and tell me anything. I begged, and I&#8217;ve rallied every 21st to make sure I&#8217;m going to get justice for my daughter!
LINAD TIGANI : Families are out here today who have their sons, their daughters, their lovers, their friends to police violence. We have folks that are mentally ill who were killed when their families were calling 911 for help. So if we cannot call 911 for help, then we see that chants like &quot;Resistance is justified&quot; when people are occupied, those chants become real.
JOSE LASALLE : I would like these officers to go through the same process that anyone that kills somebody goes through. I would like them to be handcuffed. I would like them to be put into the precinct. I would like them to be fingerprinted. I would like them to be taken down to Central Booking. I would like them to go in front of a judge. I would like the judge to set a bail that is reasoning, that is substantiate the crime that they committed. And I would like them to go through the same process that they make any civilian go through.
FRANK GRAHAM : Honest, I&#8217;m tired of walking in the street and shouting, &quot;No peace! No justice, no peace!&quot; because that&#8217;s not doing anything. It&#8217;s really not doing anything. We have to take it another step. What does that mean? We have to disrupt business. I&#8217;m not saying loot, burn, none of that. I&#8217;m saying disrupt business. I&#8217;m saying take to the bridges, take to the tunnels. We have to make these businesspeople who work on Wall Street and Park Avenue, make it hard for them to get to work. Then they&#8217;ll understand what&#8217;s going on. Then they&#8217;ll start asking their elected official, &quot;What&#8217;s going on? Why is this happening?&quot; Thanks to Democracy Now! fellows Messiah Rhodes and Anna Özbek for producing this video.

Parents with children killed by police were among those who attended a rally in front of New York City police headquarters on Monday to demand justice in the murder of Michael Brown and similar cases.

"We’re out here because they’re killing innocent people in the street, in their homes, like they did to my son, Ramarley," said Frank Graham.

Ramarley Graham was unarmed when he was shot at close range last February, in front of his six-year-old brother and grandmother, after narcotics officers chased him into his Bronx apartment. Police say Graham was trying to empty a small bag of marijuana into the toilet before he was killed. The officer who shot him was indicted for manslaughter, but a judge reluctantly threw out the indictment in May on procedural grounds. Earlier this year another grand jury chose not to indict the officer a second time.

More than a year has passed since the U.S. Justice Department indicated it may review Graham’s case. The family says it has no indication federal officials are conducting a full investigation by interviewing witnesses, as is occurring in the case of Michael Brown. On Wednesday, Graham’s family and supporters plan to deliver thousands of petitions to the U.S. Justice Department and call for a meeting with U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.

Police shootings and misconduct have been monitored locally by groups like the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement and Copwatch, which is also looking into alleged police harassment of Ramsey Orta, who filmed Eric Garner’s fatal encounter with New York Police in July. Garner died after police placed him in a chokehold and pinned him to the ground while he repeatedly said he couldn’t breathe. A day after the medical examiner ruled Garner’s death a homicide, police arrested Orta on weapons charges.

A We Will Not Go Back march calling for justice in the case of Eric Garner is planned for August 23rd and is sponsored by Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, the NAACP and local 1199 SEIU, as well as other groups.

FRANKGRAHAM: We’re out here because they’re killing innocent people in the street and in their home, as they did to my son Ramarley. There’s what we’re asking for, for these criminal cops to stop, because they are criminals, because they have these signs all over, "If you see something, say something," but they don’t say nothing when they see their buddies beating or killing people. That blue wall is silent.

ANITANEAL: They did not come to me and tell me anything. I begged, and I’ve rallied every 21st to make sure I’m going to get justice for my daughter!

LINADTIGANI: Families are out here today who have their sons, their daughters, their lovers, their friends to police violence. We have folks that are mentally ill who were killed when their families were calling 911 for help. So if we cannot call 911 for help, then we see that chants like "Resistance is justified" when people are occupied, those chants become real.

JOSELASALLE: I would like these officers to go through the same process that anyone that kills somebody goes through. I would like them to be handcuffed. I would like them to be put into the precinct. I would like them to be fingerprinted. I would like them to be taken down to Central Booking. I would like them to go in front of a judge. I would like the judge to set a bail that is reasoning, that is substantiate the crime that they committed. And I would like them to go through the same process that they make any civilian go through.

FRANKGRAHAM: Honest, I’m tired of walking in the street and shouting, "No peace! No justice, no peace!" because that’s not doing anything. It’s really not doing anything. We have to take it another step. What does that mean? We have to disrupt business. I’m not saying loot, burn, none of that. I’m saying disrupt business. I’m saying take to the bridges, take to the tunnels. We have to make these businesspeople who work on Wall Street and Park Avenue, make it hard for them to get to work. Then they’ll understand what’s going on. Then they’ll start asking their elected official, "What’s going on? Why is this happening?"

]]>
Tue, 19 Aug 2014 20:55:00 -0400VIDEO: "We are All Michael Brown" — NYC Parents Whose Kids Were Killed by Police Rally for Justice Thanks to Democracy Now! fellows Messiah Rhodes and Anna Özbek for producing this video.
Parents with children killed by police were among those who attended a rally in front of New York City police headquarters on Monday to demand justice in the murder of Michael Brown and similar cases.
&quot;We&#8217;re out here because they&#8217;re killing innocent people in the street, in their homes, like they did to my son, Ramarley,&quot; said Frank Graham.
Ramarley Graham was unarmed when he was shot at close range last February, in front of his six-year-old brother and grandmother, after narcotics officers chased him into his Bronx apartment. Police say Graham was trying to empty a small bag of marijuana into the toilet before he was killed. The officer who shot him was indicted for manslaughter, but a judge reluctantly threw out the indictment in May on procedural grounds. Earlier this year another grand jury chose not to indict the officer a second time.
More than a year has passed since the U.S. Justice Department indicated it may review Graham&#8217;s case. The family says it has no indication federal officials are conducting a full investigation by interviewing witnesses, as is occurring in the case of Michael Brown. On Wednesday, Graham&#8217;s family and supporters plan to deliver thousands of petitions to the U.S. Justice Department and call for a meeting with U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.
Police shootings and misconduct have been monitored locally by groups like the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement and Copwatch , which is also looking into alleged police harassment of Ramsey Orta, who filmed Eric Garner&#8217;s fatal encounter with New York Police in July. Garner died after police placed him in a chokehold and pinned him to the ground while he repeatedly said he couldn&#8217;t breathe. A day after the medical examiner ruled Garner&#8217;s death a homicide, police arrested Orta on weapons charges.
A We Will Not Go Back march calling for justice in the case of Eric Garner is planned for August 23rd and is sponsored by Rev. Al Sharpton&#8217;s National Action Network, the NAACP and local 1199 SEIU , as well as other groups.
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
PROTESTERS : Hands up! Don&#8217;t Shoot! Hands up! Don&#8217;t Shoot! Hands up! Don&#8217;t Shoot! Hands up! Don&#8217;t Shoot! Hands up! Don&#8217;t Shoot!
FRANK GRAHAM : We&#8217;re out here because they&#8217;re killing innocent people in the street and in their home, as they did to my son Ramarley. There&#8217;s what we&#8217;re asking for, for these criminal cops to stop, because they are criminals, because they have these signs all over, &quot;If you see something, say something,&quot; but they don&#8217;t say nothing when they see their buddies beating or killing people. That blue wall is silent.
ANITA NEAL : They did not come to me and tell me anything. I begged, and I&#8217;ve rallied every 21st to make sure I&#8217;m going to get justice for my daughter!
LINAD TIGANI : Families are out here today who have their sons, their daughters, their lovers, their friends to police violence. We have folks that are mentally ill who were killed when their families were calling 911 for help. So if we cannot call 911 for help, then we see that chants like &quot;Resistance is justified&quot; when people are occupied, those chants become real.
JOSE LASALLE : I would like these officers to go through the same process that anyone that kills somebody goes through. I would like them to be handcuffed. I would like them to be put into the precinct. I would like them to be fingerprinted. I would like them to be taken down to Central Booking. I would like them to go in front of a judge. I would like the judge to set a bail that is reasoning, that is substantiate the crime that they committed. And I would like them to go through the same process that they make any civilian go through.
FRANK GRAHAM : Honest, I&#8217;m tired of walking in the street and shouting, &quot;No peace! No justice, no peace!&quot; because that&#8217;s not doing anything. It&#8217;s really not doing anything. We have to take it another step. What does that mean? We have to disrupt business. I&#8217;m not saying loot, burn, none of that. I&#8217;m saying disrupt business. I&#8217;m saying take to the bridges, take to the tunnels. We have to make these businesspeople who work on Wall Street and Park Avenue, make it hard for them to get to work. Then they&#8217;ll understand what&#8217;s going on. Then they&#8217;ll start asking their elected official, &quot;What&#8217;s going on? Why is this happening?&quot; nonadulttv-gDemocracy Now!NewsVIDEO: "We are All Michael Brown" — NYC Parents Whose Kids Were Killed by Police Rally for Justice Thanks to Democracy Now! fellows Messiah Rhodes and Anna Özbek for producing this video.
Parents with children killed by police were among those who attended a rally in front of New York City police headquarters on Monday to demand justice in the murder of Michael Brown and similar cases.
&quot;We&#8217;re out here because they&#8217;re killing innocent people in the street, in their homes, like they did to my son, Ramarley,&quot; said Frank Graham.
Ramarley Graham was unarmed when he was shot at close range last February, in front of his six-year-old brother and grandmother, after narcotics officers chased him into his Bronx apartment. Police say Graham was trying to empty a small bag of marijuana into the toilet before he was killed. The officer who shot him was indicted for manslaughter, but a judge reluctantly threw out the indictment in May on procedural grounds. Earlier this year another grand jury chose not to indict the officer a second time.
More than a year has passed since the U.S. Justice Department indicated it may review Graham&#8217;s case. The family says it has no indication federal officials are conducting a full investigation by interviewing witnesses, as is occurring in the case of Michael Brown. On Wednesday, Graham&#8217;s family and supporters plan to deliver thousands of petitions to the U.S. Justice Department and call for a meeting with U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.
Police shootings and misconduct have been monitored locally by groups like the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement and Copwatch , which is also looking into alleged police harassment of Ramsey Orta, who filmed Eric Garner&#8217;s fatal encounter with New York Police in July. Garner died after police placed him in a chokehold and pinned him to the ground while he repeatedly said he couldn&#8217;t breathe. A day after the medical examiner ruled Garner&#8217;s death a homicide, police arrested Orta on weapons charges.
A We Will Not Go Back march calling for justice in the case of Eric Garner is planned for August 23rd and is sponsored by Rev. Al Sharpton&#8217;s National Action Network, the NAACP and local 1199 SEIU , as well as other groups.
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
PROTESTERS : Hands up! Don&#8217;t Shoot! Hands up! Don&#8217;t Shoot! Hands up! Don&#8217;t Shoot! Hands up! Don&#8217;t Shoot! Hands up! Don&#8217;t Shoot!
FRANK GRAHAM : We&#8217;re out here because they&#8217;re killing innocent people in the street and in their home, as they did to my son Ramarley. There&#8217;s what we&#8217;re asking for, for these criminal cops to stop, because they are criminals, because they have these signs all over, &quot;If you see something, say something,&quot; but they don&#8217;t say nothing when they see their buddies beating or killing people. That blue wall is silent.
ANITA NEAL : They did not come to me and tell me anything. I begged, and I&#8217;ve rallied every 21st to make sure I&#8217;m going to get justice for my daughter!
LINAD TIGANI : Families are out here today who have their sons, their daughters, their lovers, their friends to police violence. We have folks that are mentally ill who were killed when their families were calling 911 for help. So if we cannot call 911 for help, then we see that chants like &quot;Resistance is justified&quot; when people are occupied, those chants become real.
JOSE LASALLE : I would like these officers to go through the same process that anyone that kills somebody goes through. I would like them to be handcuffed. I would like them to be put into the precinct. I would like them to be fingerprinted. I would like them to be taken down to Central Booking. I would like them to go in front of a judge. I would like the judge to set a bail that is reasoning, that is substantiate the crime that they committed. And I would like them to go through the same process that they make any civilian go through.
FRANK GRAHAM : Honest, I&#8217;m tired of walking in the street and shouting, &quot;No peace! No justice, no peace!&quot; because that&#8217;s not doing anything. It&#8217;s really not doing anything. We have to take it another step. What does that mean? We have to disrupt business. I&#8217;m not saying loot, burn, none of that. I&#8217;m saying disrupt business. I&#8217;m saying take to the bridges, take to the tunnels. We have to make these businesspeople who work on Wall Street and Park Avenue, make it hard for them to get to work. Then they&#8217;ll understand what&#8217;s going on. Then they&#8217;ll start asking their elected official, &quot;What&#8217;s going on? Why is this happening?&quot; nonadulttv-gDemocracy Now!News"Your Body Is No Longer Your Own": Freed OWS Activist Cecily McMillan on Plight of Women in Jailhttp://www.democracynow.org/2014/7/14/your_body_is_no_longer_your
tag:democracynow.org,2014-07-14:en/story/4b1c90 AMY GOODMAN : &quot;Friends and Neighbors,&quot; Charlie Haden playing bass with Ornette Coleman. The legendary jazz musician and composer Charlie Haden died on Friday at the age of 76, one of the most politically outspoken jazz musicians, also co-founder of the Liberation Music Orchestra. To see our interview with Charlie Haden, go to democracynow.org. Yes, this is Democracy Now! , democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report . I&#8217;m Amy Goodman.
Twelve days ago, Occupy Wall Street activist Cecily McMillan was driven to Queens, New York, and dropped off on the side of the road, with only a MetroCard, after serving nearly two months in jail. McMillan&#8217;s sentence for allegedly assaulting a police officer was the most severe served by any of the thousands of Occupy Wall Street activists arrested over the course of the movement. To the Occupy movement, McMillan&#8217;s case had become a symbol of police and judicial overreach. She was sentenced to jail even though nine out of the 12 jurors who convicted her pleaded with the judge for leniency, saying they did not think she should serve any time behind bars.
Cecily McMillan was arrested in March 2012 as protesters tried to reoccupy Zuccotti Park, six months after the Occupy Wall Street movement began. She says she felt someone grab her right breast from behind, swung out instinctively, striking her assailant, who turned out to be a police officer, Grantley Bovell, and leaving him with a black eye. McMillan says she then suffered a seizure as police pinned her down and arrested her. She was later treated for post-traumatic stress disorder. She appeared on Democracy Now! six days after her arrest covered in bruises, including one in the shape of a hand print above her right breast.
CECILY McMILLAN: I ended a 40-something-hour stay in jail and ended up with all these bruises. I mean, that&#8217;s—I have an open case, so I can&#8217;t talk more about it, and I&#8217;m sure you can tell that it would be difficult for me to remember some things. But I have these.
AMY GOODMAN : That was Cecily McMillan right after her arrest. Her attorneys showed photos of her bruises during the trial, but the prosecutors rejected McMillan&#8217;s claim she was assaulted by police and accused her of making the bruises herself. Cecily McMillan, eventually convicted of second-degree assault, faced up to seven years in prison, a prospect that was apparently shocking even to some of the jurors who convicted her, who did not know this during the trial. The jurors were reportedly barred from researching the case during the trial, including potential sentences. One juror later told The Guardian newspaper, &quot;Most wanted her to do probation, maybe some community service.&quot; Well, McMillan was ultimately sentenced to three months in jail, five years of probation. She was released earlier this month, joins us now.
Welcome back to Democracy Now!
CECILY McMILLAN: Thank you for having me.
AMY GOODMAN : So, how are you doing? How was—you spent your time at Rikers.
CECILY McMILLAN: Yeah. It&#8217;s very discombobulating to be out now. Honestly, it&#8217;s hard to return to my even loving and supportive community after essentially creating a family in there, people that really sustained me and people who really understand what it means to have all of your agency taken away, to be constantly in a humiliating and oppressive situation. And then to be out here, everything from selecting an outfit to learning how to, you know, rework the Internet, has been a very difficult feat.
AMY GOODMAN : So, we didn&#8217;t get to talk to you when you were sentenced and went to prison. The response, not only of people outside, but the jurors themselves—what was your response to them? Very rare to write a letter like that to a judge, to say, &quot;Do not imprison her.&quot;
CECILY McMILLAN: Well, I was very thankful that they did step forward and that they did get themselves organized and step up front on my behalf. I mean, I was very shocked that there was, as my lawyer called it, the smoking gun, the handprint on the chest with the scratch marks, and the story that I had maintained the entire time, versus Officer Bovell, who had changed his stories a couple of time—and to hear another woman look at you and say, &quot;Aliens might have—well have sexually assaulted you,&quot; is a form of rape culture that—
AMY GOODMAN : What do you mean?
CECILY McMILLAN: Well, that&#8217;s what the DA said. They said it was more likely that aliens assaulted me than Officer Bovell, and essentially said that I was a liar, which is something women experience all of the time when they try to speak out against their sexual assaulters.
AMY GOODMAN : And so, you went to jail.
CECILY McMILLAN: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN : Talk—describe a day in jail.
CECILY McMILLAN: Well, every day is mostly waiting. You have to wait for up to—I never went to sick hall and was there for less than six hours. You could be waiting for up to 12 hours to see a doctor, even sometimes 12 hours two or three days in a row. There are constant searches, where you&#8217;re made to lay face down, put your hands behind your back, and it&#8217;s a three- to four-hour process where dogs can even be brought in around you, strip searches all of the time—deep knee bend, deep knee bend. I mean, everything about—the best thing I could say that might share some sort of insight to the audience is, in the entire experience that I was there, I had, I think, a grand total of 30 seconds ever alone. It was in an elevator where there was nobody there, and yet the camera was still watching me. Literally, from using the restroom to changing, I mean, you have—your body is no longer your own.
AMY GOODMAN : What was the message of women, knowing you were getting out now, to people on the other side of the bars?
CECILY McMILLAN: I mean, that was a really big discussion. We had launched some campaigns while we were in there, particularly the fact that mail, medication, meal and recreation was called every day at the same time, forcing women to choose between the four services, in order to either achieve their antidepressant medication or to eat that day or to spend the 45 minutes we&#8217;re allowed outside in the sun that day, to correspondence from their family and loved ones. So, by the time that I was moving towards leaving, we had had sort of a Zuccotti Park-like participatory democracy where we really did discuss the fact that there was no rehabilitation effort whatsoever that was realistic associated with our punitive system, and what were some demands and changes that could be put forth in order to make those changes. And I firmly believe that those who struggle understand the source of their struggle best, and therefore understand its solution. So I sat there with 53 little pieces of paper on the phone with my team reading out what these women said. And they essentially called for basic tenets of what, you know, we have been talking about, the Democratic Party, for at least as far as I&#8217;ve lived. We talked about healthcare, access to healthcare, to emergency medical services, to—
AMY GOODMAN : One woman died while you were in prison?
CECILY McMILLAN: Yeah. Well, not one woman died. I mean, that&#8217;s—I mean, one woman that I personally witnessed died. Another woman died the day that I left, a 17-year-old. So, Judith came into our dorm, and she seemed fine. She was happy. She was very funny. And within three days, she had been reduced to vomiting blood, what looked to be chunks of her liver. At this point, she hadn&#8217;t eaten for over 24 hours. She was so confused that she would sit on other people&#8217;s beds, didn&#8217;t know where her bed was. And when two medical professionals came up, and she, you know, was not enthused about the idea of going down with people who had denied her her medical services before, they said, &quot;OK, well, she said she didn&#8217;t want to come with us, so she denied medical service, and we&#8217;re not going to take her down.&quot; And it was very clear that she was absolutely delusional, that there&#8217;s no way that she could have made any sort of decisions for herself. And it was not until all of the inmates rose up, I mean, got her dressed and carried her down and said, &quot;This is a medical emergency. You have to take her to the hospital.&quot; And even then, the doctor, as she&#8217;s standing there covered with her own blood, said, &quot;Huh! You call this a medical emergency?&quot; And they waited there with her until they made sure she went to the hospital, where she remained in critical care condition until her death a couple of weeks ago.
And this, though, I would like to say, is not an anomaly. I witnessed women that had stomach cancer, that could not help themselves up, that had been crying out for hours, their bunkies—roommate, their family, until medical professionals showed up with a gurney and would not help her up on the gurney as the gurney moved to two wheels. They said, &quot;We&#8217;re not helping her.&quot; And, I mean, again, every single day there was something like this.
AMY GOODMAN : So, where do you go from here?
CECILY McMILLAN: Well, on behalf of the inmates, I will be calling on the Mayor&#8217;s Office, City Council, the Board of Corrections. We have already started looking into what community oversight councils they have—and there are few, and not at all very working. We&#8217;ll be calling for every inmate to have a full and thorough physical examination and psychosocial examination upon entering the facility. We&#8217;ll be asking that the protocol that governs Rikers is reviewed and made sure that it&#8217;s in the best interest of all of the inmates. We&#8217;ll also be asking for a grievance process. At this point, the director of grievances told me point-blank she&#8217;s not accountable to uphold the inmate handbook because she didn&#8217;t write it. We will also be calling for resources, career training as well as domestic abuse resources and housing resources for women who are returning to their families and would like nothing better to stay out of jail, be happy and take care of their families. I don&#8217;t understand what we think of as prisoners in this country.
AMY GOODMAN : We have to leave it there. The system might be very sorry you ultimately were imprisoned. Cecily McMillan, I want to thank you for being with us, Occupy Wall Street activist who was recently released from Rikers Island after serving nearly two months behind bars, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. AMYGOODMAN: "Friends and Neighbors," Charlie Haden playing bass with Ornette Coleman. The legendary jazz musician and composer Charlie Haden died on Friday at the age of 76, one of the most politically outspoken jazz musicians, also co-founder of the Liberation Music Orchestra. To see our interview with Charlie Haden, go to democracynow.org. Yes, this is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

Twelve days ago, Occupy Wall Street activist Cecily McMillan was driven to Queens, New York, and dropped off on the side of the road, with only a MetroCard, after serving nearly two months in jail. McMillan’s sentence for allegedly assaulting a police officer was the most severe served by any of the thousands of Occupy Wall Street activists arrested over the course of the movement. To the Occupy movement, McMillan’s case had become a symbol of police and judicial overreach. She was sentenced to jail even though nine out of the 12 jurors who convicted her pleaded with the judge for leniency, saying they did not think she should serve any time behind bars.

Cecily McMillan was arrested in March 2012 as protesters tried to reoccupy Zuccotti Park, six months after the Occupy Wall Street movement began. She says she felt someone grab her right breast from behind, swung out instinctively, striking her assailant, who turned out to be a police officer, Grantley Bovell, and leaving him with a black eye. McMillan says she then suffered a seizure as police pinned her down and arrested her. She was later treated for post-traumatic stress disorder. She appeared on Democracy Now! six days after her arrest covered in bruises, including one in the shape of a hand print above her right breast.

CECILY McMILLAN: I ended a 40-something-hour stay in jail and ended up with all these bruises. I mean, that’s—I have an open case, so I can’t talk more about it, and I’m sure you can tell that it would be difficult for me to remember some things. But I have these.

AMYGOODMAN: That was Cecily McMillan right after her arrest. Her attorneys showed photos of her bruises during the trial, but the prosecutors rejected McMillan’s claim she was assaulted by police and accused her of making the bruises herself. Cecily McMillan, eventually convicted of second-degree assault, faced up to seven years in prison, a prospect that was apparently shocking even to some of the jurors who convicted her, who did not know this during the trial. The jurors were reportedly barred from researching the case during the trial, including potential sentences. One juror later told The Guardian newspaper, "Most wanted her to do probation, maybe some community service." Well, McMillan was ultimately sentenced to three months in jail, five years of probation. She was released earlier this month, joins us now.

Welcome back to Democracy Now!

CECILY McMILLAN: Thank you for having me.

AMYGOODMAN: So, how are you doing? How was—you spent your time at Rikers.

CECILY McMILLAN: Yeah. It’s very discombobulating to be out now. Honestly, it’s hard to return to my even loving and supportive community after essentially creating a family in there, people that really sustained me and people who really understand what it means to have all of your agency taken away, to be constantly in a humiliating and oppressive situation. And then to be out here, everything from selecting an outfit to learning how to, you know, rework the Internet, has been a very difficult feat.

AMYGOODMAN: So, we didn’t get to talk to you when you were sentenced and went to prison. The response, not only of people outside, but the jurors themselves—what was your response to them? Very rare to write a letter like that to a judge, to say, "Do not imprison her."

CECILY McMILLAN: Well, I was very thankful that they did step forward and that they did get themselves organized and step up front on my behalf. I mean, I was very shocked that there was, as my lawyer called it, the smoking gun, the handprint on the chest with the scratch marks, and the story that I had maintained the entire time, versus Officer Bovell, who had changed his stories a couple of time—and to hear another woman look at you and say, "Aliens might have—well have sexually assaulted you," is a form of rape culture that—

AMYGOODMAN: What do you mean?

CECILY McMILLAN: Well, that’s what the DA said. They said it was more likely that aliens assaulted me than Officer Bovell, and essentially said that I was a liar, which is something women experience all of the time when they try to speak out against their sexual assaulters.

AMYGOODMAN: And so, you went to jail.

CECILY McMILLAN: Yeah.

AMYGOODMAN: Talk—describe a day in jail.

CECILY McMILLAN: Well, every day is mostly waiting. You have to wait for up to—I never went to sick hall and was there for less than six hours. You could be waiting for up to 12 hours to see a doctor, even sometimes 12 hours two or three days in a row. There are constant searches, where you’re made to lay face down, put your hands behind your back, and it’s a three- to four-hour process where dogs can even be brought in around you, strip searches all of the time—deep knee bend, deep knee bend. I mean, everything about—the best thing I could say that might share some sort of insight to the audience is, in the entire experience that I was there, I had, I think, a grand total of 30 seconds ever alone. It was in an elevator where there was nobody there, and yet the camera was still watching me. Literally, from using the restroom to changing, I mean, you have—your body is no longer your own.

AMYGOODMAN: What was the message of women, knowing you were getting out now, to people on the other side of the bars?

CECILY McMILLAN: I mean, that was a really big discussion. We had launched some campaigns while we were in there, particularly the fact that mail, medication, meal and recreation was called every day at the same time, forcing women to choose between the four services, in order to either achieve their antidepressant medication or to eat that day or to spend the 45 minutes we’re allowed outside in the sun that day, to correspondence from their family and loved ones. So, by the time that I was moving towards leaving, we had had sort of a Zuccotti Park-like participatory democracy where we really did discuss the fact that there was no rehabilitation effort whatsoever that was realistic associated with our punitive system, and what were some demands and changes that could be put forth in order to make those changes. And I firmly believe that those who struggle understand the source of their struggle best, and therefore understand its solution. So I sat there with 53 little pieces of paper on the phone with my team reading out what these women said. And they essentially called for basic tenets of what, you know, we have been talking about, the Democratic Party, for at least as far as I’ve lived. We talked about healthcare, access to healthcare, to emergency medical services, to—

AMYGOODMAN: One woman died while you were in prison?

CECILY McMILLAN: Yeah. Well, not one woman died. I mean, that’s—I mean, one woman that I personally witnessed died. Another woman died the day that I left, a 17-year-old. So, Judith came into our dorm, and she seemed fine. She was happy. She was very funny. And within three days, she had been reduced to vomiting blood, what looked to be chunks of her liver. At this point, she hadn’t eaten for over 24 hours. She was so confused that she would sit on other people’s beds, didn’t know where her bed was. And when two medical professionals came up, and she, you know, was not enthused about the idea of going down with people who had denied her her medical services before, they said, "OK, well, she said she didn’t want to come with us, so she denied medical service, and we’re not going to take her down." And it was very clear that she was absolutely delusional, that there’s no way that she could have made any sort of decisions for herself. And it was not until all of the inmates rose up, I mean, got her dressed and carried her down and said, "This is a medical emergency. You have to take her to the hospital." And even then, the doctor, as she’s standing there covered with her own blood, said, "Huh! You call this a medical emergency?" And they waited there with her until they made sure she went to the hospital, where she remained in critical care condition until her death a couple of weeks ago.

And this, though, I would like to say, is not an anomaly. I witnessed women that had stomach cancer, that could not help themselves up, that had been crying out for hours, their bunkies—roommate, their family, until medical professionals showed up with a gurney and would not help her up on the gurney as the gurney moved to two wheels. They said, "We’re not helping her." And, I mean, again, every single day there was something like this.

AMYGOODMAN: So, where do you go from here?

CECILY McMILLAN: Well, on behalf of the inmates, I will be calling on the Mayor’s Office, City Council, the Board of Corrections. We have already started looking into what community oversight councils they have—and there are few, and not at all very working. We’ll be calling for every inmate to have a full and thorough physical examination and psychosocial examination upon entering the facility. We’ll be asking that the protocol that governs Rikers is reviewed and made sure that it’s in the best interest of all of the inmates. We’ll also be asking for a grievance process. At this point, the director of grievances told me point-blank she’s not accountable to uphold the inmate handbook because she didn’t write it. We will also be calling for resources, career training as well as domestic abuse resources and housing resources for women who are returning to their families and would like nothing better to stay out of jail, be happy and take care of their families. I don’t understand what we think of as prisoners in this country.

AMYGOODMAN: We have to leave it there. The system might be very sorry you ultimately were imprisoned. Cecily McMillan, I want to thank you for being with us, Occupy Wall Street activist who was recently released from Rikers Island after serving nearly two months behind bars, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

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Mon, 14 Jul 2014 00:00:00 -0400Protesting the 1964 World's Fair: Activists Recall Effort to Highlight Civil Rights, Labor Struggleshttp://www.democracynow.org/2014/4/25/protesting_the_1964_world_s_fair
tag:democracynow.org,2014-04-25:en/story/1ac732 AMY GOODMAN : &quot;It&#8217;s a Small World After All&quot; by the Disneyland Chorus. Yes, this is Democracy Now! , democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report . A song that many people heard for the same—for the first time at the 1964 World&#8217;s Fair. I&#8217;m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, events are underway this week in New York to mark the 50th anniversary of that World&#8217;s Fair, that, in 1964, when the fair took place in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Queens, it drew 51 million visitors over the span of two years. On April 22nd, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson spoke at the fair&#8217;s opening ceremonies.
PRESIDENT LYNDON JOHNSON : This fair represents the most promising of our hopes. It gathers together from 80 countries the achievements of industry, the health of nations, the creations of man. This fair shows us what man at his most creative and constructive is capable of doing.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yes, it was 50 years ago that fair-goers flocked to the World&#8217;s Fair to get a taste of the wider world and a glimpse of a possible future full of rocketships, superhighways and complex kitchen gadgets. But that year, a very different future was being chiseled out by a devoted group of civil rights activists who used the prominence of the World&#8217;s Fair to propel their fight for racial equality into the national consciousness. Their vision for the future involved less spaceships and more integrated schools. They were less interested in the fair&#8217;s futuristic exhibits and more concerned with equitable hiring practices on the fair&#8217;s grounds. The protesters greeted President Johnson with chants for the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Of the 700 who demonstrated, nearly 300 were arrested and carted off to jail.
AMY GOODMAN : We turn now to looking at this largely untold history. We&#8217;re joined by Norman and Velma Hill, longtime civil and labor rights activists. Fifty years ago, they helped organize that nonviolent protest at the New York World&#8217;s Fair.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Talk about what the scene was like. You got into the World&#8217;s Fair, or you were standing right outside?
VELMA HILL : We got into the World&#8217;s Fair. But first let me just thank you for having us here. We&#8217;re very happy to be here, and we&#8217;re very happy to talk about an event that most people just aren&#8217;t aware of now. It was April 22nd, which, by the way, was Norm&#8217;s birthday. So we were doing—
AMY GOODMAN : Happy birthday, Norman.
NORMAN HILL : Thank you.
VELMA HILL : We were doing what we did most of the time, which was demonstrating. Now, that was a CORE demonstration. But—
AMY GOODMAN : You mean the Congress of Racial Equality.
VELMA HILL : The Congress of Racial Equality, CORE , under Jim Farmer, because CORE became a very different organization years later. But this was under Jim Farmer right after the Freedom Rides in the South. And we were very concerned. Norm was the program director of CORE , and we were doing many things to bring the—what was going on in the South to the North, because there were always problems in the North.
NORMAN HILL : Yeah, and Velma was East Coast field secretary.
VELMA HILL : Of CORE , yes. We were a couple at CORE . And we had something very interesting happening on that April 22nd. We had what we called extremist groups in CORE who had decided that they agreed with our goals, but they didn&#8217;t like our tactics. What they wanted to do was what they called a stall-in. And a stall-in, they had planned to do some very interesting things. They had planned to go onto subways, stop subways from running by pulling—pulling down the—
NORMAN HILL : Emergency.
AMY GOODMAN : The emergency brake?
NORMAN HILL : Yeah, the cord.
VELMA HILL : The emergency brake. They had planned to sit in at the bridges and stop people from going to work. And they had planned to take ravenous rats and to set them loose when President Johnson was going to speak. And we just didn&#8217;t think that that was a good idea. We thought that that&#8217;s really preventing workers from going to work, who had nothing to do with the World&#8217;s Fair. So we planned something at the World&#8217;s Fair where we got 700 people from around the country to come in to sit in at pavilions, to say we want the passage of the civil rights bill, and we want to make sure that there are minorities working at the World&#8217;s Fair, visibly working, because this world is not a white world. It is a white world and a brown world and a black world. And we wanted to make that statement and make it clear.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Norman Hill, what about the hiring of people in the weeks and months before that at the World&#8217;s Fair? Had there been clear problems in the hiring at that point?
NORMAN HILL : Yes, there were. It was clear to us that the workforce was not representative and did not include minorities, especially blacks, at all levels. And so, we felt it was important to dramatize this situation and confront the key decision-makers at the World&#8217;s Fair about this problem and to organize a demonstration that would directly confront the World&#8217;s Fair and those who were running it. And we did so by assembling a group of demonstrators, as Velma indicated, who sat in at various pavilions of the World&#8217;s Fair, including the main entrance, where James Farmer, the national director of the Congress of Racial Equality; Michael Harrington, Democratic Socialist writer and author or The Other America , exposé of poverty in America; Bayard Rustin, A. Philip Randolph&#8217;s most outstanding colleague and a master strategist and tactician of the civil rights movement; Ernie Green, assistant secretary of labor under Ray Marshall and President Clinton; and—
VELMA HILL : And before that, one of the Little Rock Nine, yes.
NORMAN HILL : In Little Rock, Arkansas.
VELMA HILL : Yes.
NORMAN HILL : Who endured mob threats, and Eisenhower had to call in the troops to enable them to integrate Central High School in Little Rock in 1957. But we think that the clear focal point in 1964 here in New York City was the World&#8217;s Fair and our attempt to demonstrate that the workforce was not representative and inclusive.
VELMA HILL : By the way, one of the things that happened at that World&#8217;s Fair demonstration, I think it was the first time that we actually used walkie-talkies. You know, CORE sort of came into the 20th century with walkie-talkies. They were very big, nothing like you would see now. And we had about 15 CORE staffers who were placed all around the World&#8217;s Fair. And Norm was called King Cobra. And here&#8217;s Norm, who isn&#8217;t imperial at all. But he was King Cobra, and I was Cobra One. And we took them out a week before and practiced what they would say, who got arrested, which pavilion it was, and we had a whole dialogue so that we would know what was going on at the World&#8217;s Fair.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, I want to turn to a clip from the person who was in charge of the World&#8217;s Fair, perhaps one of the—the most influential figure in the history of modern New York, Robert Moses.
VELMA HILL : Yes.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: He&#8217;s been memorialized, of course, in Robert Caro&#8217;s book, The Power Broker —
VELMA HILL : Yes.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: —about the master builder of urban America. And he spoke at the opening of the fair in April of 1964.
ROBERT MOSES : We invite visitors from every state and land, solicit their friendship, and devoutly hope that in presenting here this Olympics of progress, we shall draw them closer together in our shrinking globe and thus, in the end, promote peace.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was Robert Moses. And as Robert Caro has pointed out in his book, Moses and all of his building and reconfiguring of New York really destroyed many black and Hispanic communities. He had a racial edge to much of his redevelopment approach, and racial bias. And I&#8217;m wondering, your recollections of Moses at that time and his importance in the city?
NORMAN HILL : Well, he attempted to be an imperial figure and, in fact, a kind of a law unto himself. And he was, to put it gently, insensitive to the needs and concerns of minorities, especially blacks, in that period. And we thought it important that he understand that this could not be a peaceable gathering without economic justice, without equitable representation at all levels of the World&#8217;s Fair workforce.
AMY GOODMAN : I wanted to turn to LBJ . After years of setbacks, advocates for equality, you—one of the protest&#8217;s reasons was—at the World&#8217;s Fair, was the the signing of the Civil Rights Act. This was Johnson just a few months later signing the Civil Rights Act.
PRESIDENT LYNDON JOHNSON : We must not approach the observance and enforcement of this law in a vengeful spirit. Its purpose is not to punish. Its purpose is not to divide, but to end divisions, divisions which have lasted all too long. Its purpose is national, not regional. This Civil Rights Act is a challenge to all of us to go to work in our communities and our states, in our homes and in our hearts, to eliminate the last vestiges of injustice in our beloved country.
AMY GOODMAN : Now, that was July 2nd, 1964. You protested the World&#8217;s Fair April 22nd, 1964, pushing for this, as well as fair hiring. And just before this, in the summer before, Dr. Martin Luther King, Bayard Rustin, 250,000 other people—
VELMA HILL : Absolutely.
AMY GOODMAN : —were on the Mall in Washington, D.C. I wanted to turn to Bayard Rustin speaking in 1963 on August 28th.
BAYARD RUSTIN : We demand that segregation be ended in every school district in the year 1963! We demand that we have effective civil rights legislation—no compromise, no filibuster—and that it include public accommodations, decent housing, integrated education, FEPC and the right to vote. What do you say? We demand the withholding of federal funds from all programs in which discrimination exists. What do you say?
AMY GOODMAN : That was Bayard Rustin, the chief organizer, along with A. Philip Randolph, of the 1963 March on Washington. Norm Hill, you became head of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, so you worked with both of these men through this period.
NORMAN HILL : In fact, I was staff coordinator under A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin of the March on Washington.
AMY GOODMAN : Your thoughts today, 50 years later?
VELMA HILL : I think it&#8217;s very interesting, because that March on Washington did something that most people don&#8217;t understand. Before the March on Washington, the question of race was the dominant factor that we were protesting about. With the March on Washington and those demands, there was a convergence of race and class that most people don&#8217;t understand. But look at what Bayard was saying, what we wanted. We wanted full employment. The civil rights movement—
AMY GOODMAN : We have 10 seconds.
VELMA HILL : Ah, we wanted full employment and things that were both—were economic in nature.
AMY GOODMAN : And I think what&#8217;s so fascinating is that when the Civil Rights Act was signed, now the emphasis on LBJ , it was about movements—
VELMA HILL : Yes.
AMY GOODMAN : —leading into that moment.
VELMA HILL : Yes.
AMY GOODMAN : And you were a part of that movement, leading 700 people protesting in the World&#8217;s Fair a few months before.
VELMA HILL : Absolutely.
AMY GOODMAN : Norman and Velma Hill, I want to thank you so much for being with us to remind us of this historical moment, or teach us about a moment we didn&#8217;t even know about.
That does it for the broadcast. I&#8217;ll be speaking at the Green Fest at 54th Street, Pier 94, in New York Saturday at 3:00. AMYGOODMAN: "It’s a Small World After All" by the Disneyland Chorus. Yes, this is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. A song that many people heard for the same—for the first time at the 1964 World’s Fair. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, events are underway this week in New York to mark the 50th anniversary of that World’s Fair, that, in 1964, when the fair took place in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Queens, it drew 51 million visitors over the span of two years. On April 22nd, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson spoke at the fair’s opening ceremonies.

PRESIDENTLYNDONJOHNSON: This fair represents the most promising of our hopes. It gathers together from 80 countries the achievements of industry, the health of nations, the creations of man. This fair shows us what man at his most creative and constructive is capable of doing.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yes, it was 50 years ago that fair-goers flocked to the World’s Fair to get a taste of the wider world and a glimpse of a possible future full of rocketships, superhighways and complex kitchen gadgets. But that year, a very different future was being chiseled out by a devoted group of civil rights activists who used the prominence of the World’s Fair to propel their fight for racial equality into the national consciousness. Their vision for the future involved less spaceships and more integrated schools. They were less interested in the fair’s futuristic exhibits and more concerned with equitable hiring practices on the fair’s grounds. The protesters greeted President Johnson with chants for the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Of the 700 who demonstrated, nearly 300 were arrested and carted off to jail.

AMYGOODMAN: We turn now to looking at this largely untold history. We’re joined by Norman and Velma Hill, longtime civil and labor rights activists. Fifty years ago, they helped organize that nonviolent protest at the New York World’s Fair.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Talk about what the scene was like. You got into the World’s Fair, or you were standing right outside?

VELMAHILL: We got into the World’s Fair. But first let me just thank you for having us here. We’re very happy to be here, and we’re very happy to talk about an event that most people just aren’t aware of now. It was April 22nd, which, by the way, was Norm’s birthday. So we were doing—

AMYGOODMAN: Happy birthday, Norman.

NORMANHILL: Thank you.

VELMAHILL: We were doing what we did most of the time, which was demonstrating. Now, that was a CORE demonstration. But—

AMYGOODMAN: You mean the Congress of Racial Equality.

VELMAHILL: The Congress of Racial Equality, CORE, under Jim Farmer, because CORE became a very different organization years later. But this was under Jim Farmer right after the Freedom Rides in the South. And we were very concerned. Norm was the program director of CORE, and we were doing many things to bring the—what was going on in the South to the North, because there were always problems in the North.

NORMANHILL: Yeah, and Velma was East Coast field secretary.

VELMAHILL: Of CORE, yes. We were a couple at CORE. And we had something very interesting happening on that April 22nd. We had what we called extremist groups in CORE who had decided that they agreed with our goals, but they didn’t like our tactics. What they wanted to do was what they called a stall-in. And a stall-in, they had planned to do some very interesting things. They had planned to go onto subways, stop subways from running by pulling—pulling down the—

NORMANHILL: Emergency.

AMYGOODMAN: The emergency brake?

NORMANHILL: Yeah, the cord.

VELMAHILL: The emergency brake. They had planned to sit in at the bridges and stop people from going to work. And they had planned to take ravenous rats and to set them loose when President Johnson was going to speak. And we just didn’t think that that was a good idea. We thought that that’s really preventing workers from going to work, who had nothing to do with the World’s Fair. So we planned something at the World’s Fair where we got 700 people from around the country to come in to sit in at pavilions, to say we want the passage of the civil rights bill, and we want to make sure that there are minorities working at the World’s Fair, visibly working, because this world is not a white world. It is a white world and a brown world and a black world. And we wanted to make that statement and make it clear.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Norman Hill, what about the hiring of people in the weeks and months before that at the World’s Fair? Had there been clear problems in the hiring at that point?

NORMANHILL: Yes, there were. It was clear to us that the workforce was not representative and did not include minorities, especially blacks, at all levels. And so, we felt it was important to dramatize this situation and confront the key decision-makers at the World’s Fair about this problem and to organize a demonstration that would directly confront the World’s Fair and those who were running it. And we did so by assembling a group of demonstrators, as Velma indicated, who sat in at various pavilions of the World’s Fair, including the main entrance, where James Farmer, the national director of the Congress of Racial Equality; Michael Harrington, Democratic Socialist writer and author or The Other America, exposé of poverty in America; Bayard Rustin, A. Philip Randolph’s most outstanding colleague and a master strategist and tactician of the civil rights movement; Ernie Green, assistant secretary of labor under Ray Marshall and President Clinton; and—

VELMAHILL: And before that, one of the Little Rock Nine, yes.

NORMANHILL: In Little Rock, Arkansas.

VELMAHILL: Yes.

NORMANHILL: Who endured mob threats, and Eisenhower had to call in the troops to enable them to integrate Central High School in Little Rock in 1957. But we think that the clear focal point in 1964 here in New York City was the World’s Fair and our attempt to demonstrate that the workforce was not representative and inclusive.

VELMAHILL: By the way, one of the things that happened at that World’s Fair demonstration, I think it was the first time that we actually used walkie-talkies. You know, CORE sort of came into the 20th century with walkie-talkies. They were very big, nothing like you would see now. And we had about 15 CORE staffers who were placed all around the World’s Fair. And Norm was called King Cobra. And here’s Norm, who isn’t imperial at all. But he was King Cobra, and I was Cobra One. And we took them out a week before and practiced what they would say, who got arrested, which pavilion it was, and we had a whole dialogue so that we would know what was going on at the World’s Fair.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, I want to turn to a clip from the person who was in charge of the World’s Fair, perhaps one of the—the most influential figure in the history of modern New York, Robert Moses.

VELMAHILL: Yes.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: He’s been memorialized, of course, in Robert Caro’s book, The Power Broker—

VELMAHILL: Yes.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: —about the master builder of urban America. And he spoke at the opening of the fair in April of 1964.

ROBERTMOSES: We invite visitors from every state and land, solicit their friendship, and devoutly hope that in presenting here this Olympics of progress, we shall draw them closer together in our shrinking globe and thus, in the end, promote peace.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was Robert Moses. And as Robert Caro has pointed out in his book, Moses and all of his building and reconfiguring of New York really destroyed many black and Hispanic communities. He had a racial edge to much of his redevelopment approach, and racial bias. And I’m wondering, your recollections of Moses at that time and his importance in the city?

NORMANHILL: Well, he attempted to be an imperial figure and, in fact, a kind of a law unto himself. And he was, to put it gently, insensitive to the needs and concerns of minorities, especially blacks, in that period. And we thought it important that he understand that this could not be a peaceable gathering without economic justice, without equitable representation at all levels of the World’s Fair workforce.

AMYGOODMAN: I wanted to turn to LBJ. After years of setbacks, advocates for equality, you—one of the protest’s reasons was—at the World’s Fair, was the the signing of the Civil Rights Act. This was Johnson just a few months later signing the Civil Rights Act.

PRESIDENTLYNDONJOHNSON: We must not approach the observance and enforcement of this law in a vengeful spirit. Its purpose is not to punish. Its purpose is not to divide, but to end divisions, divisions which have lasted all too long. Its purpose is national, not regional. This Civil Rights Act is a challenge to all of us to go to work in our communities and our states, in our homes and in our hearts, to eliminate the last vestiges of injustice in our beloved country.

AMYGOODMAN: Now, that was July 2nd, 1964. You protested the World’s Fair April 22nd, 1964, pushing for this, as well as fair hiring. And just before this, in the summer before, Dr. Martin Luther King, Bayard Rustin, 250,000 other people—

VELMAHILL: Absolutely.

AMYGOODMAN: —were on the Mall in Washington, D.C. I wanted to turn to Bayard Rustin speaking in 1963 on August 28th.

BAYARDRUSTIN: We demand that segregation be ended in every school district in the year 1963! We demand that we have effective civil rights legislation—no compromise, no filibuster—and that it include public accommodations, decent housing, integrated education, FEPC and the right to vote. What do you say? We demand the withholding of federal funds from all programs in which discrimination exists. What do you say?

AMYGOODMAN: That was Bayard Rustin, the chief organizer, along with A. Philip Randolph, of the 1963 March on Washington. Norm Hill, you became head of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, so you worked with both of these men through this period.

NORMANHILL: In fact, I was staff coordinator under A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin of the March on Washington.

AMYGOODMAN: Your thoughts today, 50 years later?

VELMAHILL: I think it’s very interesting, because that March on Washington did something that most people don’t understand. Before the March on Washington, the question of race was the dominant factor that we were protesting about. With the March on Washington and those demands, there was a convergence of race and class that most people don’t understand. But look at what Bayard was saying, what we wanted. We wanted full employment. The civil rights movement—

AMYGOODMAN: We have 10 seconds.

VELMAHILL: Ah, we wanted full employment and things that were both—were economic in nature.

AMYGOODMAN: And I think what’s so fascinating is that when the Civil Rights Act was signed, now the emphasis on LBJ, it was about movements—

VELMAHILL: Yes.

AMYGOODMAN: —leading into that moment.

VELMAHILL: Yes.

AMYGOODMAN: And you were a part of that movement, leading 700 people protesting in the World’s Fair a few months before.

VELMAHILL: Absolutely.

AMYGOODMAN: Norman and Velma Hill, I want to thank you so much for being with us to remind us of this historical moment, or teach us about a moment we didn’t even know about.

That does it for the broadcast. I’ll be speaking at the Green Fest at 54th Street, Pier 94, in New York Saturday at 3:00.

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Fri, 25 Apr 2014 00:00:00 -0400Earth Day Special: "Fierce Green Fire" Documentary Explores Environmental Movement's Global Risehttp://www.democracynow.org/2014/4/22/earth_day_special_fierce_green_fire
tag:democracynow.org,2014-04-22:en/story/3fef21 AMY GOODMAN : Today is Earth Day. It began in 1970 as a &quot;National Teach-In on the Crisis of the Environment&quot; and has grown to become a worldwide day of action. Forty years ago, one in 10 Americans participated in Earth Day. This year an estimated one billion people will join in around the world.
This year&#8217;s Earth Day comes as new research published in PLOS ONE highlights the connection between pollution and racial injustice. Nationwide, people of color on average are exposed to 38 percent higher levels of outdoor nitrogen dioxide pollution than whites, a difference that amounts to an estimated 7,000 deaths per year from heart disease. Another study shows the number of major wildfires in the western United States has dramatically increased due to drought and rising temperatures from climate change. The findings published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters show the number of large wildfires rose from 1984 to 2011 at a rate of seven fires per year. Earlier this month, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned the world has just 15 years to stave off the most devastating impacts of climate change.
Well, today, we spend the hour looking at the history of the environmental movement. It&#8217;s told in the new film A Fierce Green Fire .
ELIZABETH RETTON : I carried a child for nine months. Our little Julie was stillborn. The loss of our child may be a direct result to the chemicals. Please don&#8217;t allow this to happen to anyone else before you get them out.
JOHN ADAMS : Raw sewage was going right down the Hudson River. Air pollution was growing just as fast as new automobiles were coming out.
DOUG SCOTT : The dams in the Grand Canyon, that was going to be a fight to the death.
MARTIN LITTON : They were going to take the water out of the river. All of it.
RACHEL CARSON : To these people, apparently, the balance of nature was something that was repealed as soon as man came on the scene.
JAMES FARMER : If we do not save the environment, then whatever we do in civil right will be of no meaning, because then we will have the equality of extinction.
JOHN ADAMS : All of a sudden, people said, &quot;Wait a second. This is not how we have to live.&quot;
LOIS GIBBS : If I was to let the two EPA representatives come out this door, does anybody know what would happen to them?
PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN : There is environmental extremism. I don&#8217;t think they&#8217;ll be happy until the White House looks like a bird&#8217;s nest.
REPORTER : The protesters were told not to block the trucks. They are now lying in the streets now blocking one truck.
REX WEYLER : It wasn&#8217;t just a matter of holding up signs saying &quot;stop killing the whales.&quot; No, Greenpeace wanted to get out there in front of the whaling boats and stop them.
STEWART BRAND : They were reinventing civilization and did not know how. And I didn&#8217;t either, but I figured we might find out.
VIJAYA NAGARAJAN : How do you hold forests in common, when every other force around you is trying to get you to privatize?
WANGARI MAATHAI : We are going to shed blood because of our land. We will. Our forefathers shed blood for our land.
BILL McKIBBEN: Americans understood what was going on and what the danger was, but still nothing happening in Washington. Not a damn thing.
SEN . JAMES INHOFE : Global warming is the greatest single hoax ever perpetrated.
STEPHEN SCHNEIDER : I don&#8217;t know. Do we have to have a hurricane take out Miami and Shanghai to have everybody wake up? If it happened next year, it might be possible to still do that. What a hell of a way to run a planet.
AMY GOODMAN : That&#8217;s the trailer for A Fierce Green Fire . Yes, today is Earth Day, and we&#8217;re looking at the history of the environmental movement as told in this sweeping documentary that airs tonight on PBS American Masters . Today we&#8217;re featuring extended excerpts from the film, including a look at one of the first battles over a toxic waste dump. It may surprise you to know that it was led by housewives, led by Lois Gibbs. We&#8217;ll also look at Greenpeace&#8217;s campaigns to save whales and baby harp seals, and later, a fight by Chico Mendes and the Brazilian rubber tappers to save the Amazon rainforest. But in San Francisco, we&#8217;re joined by the director of A Fierce Green Fire , Mark Kitchell.
Mark, welcome to Democracy Now! Talk about the scope of this film and why you decided to make A Fierce Green Fire .
MARK KITCHELL : Well, we saw that nobody had made a sort of big picture overview, a history, an exploration of the environmental movement. And that was the basic impulse. We figured, 50 years into this movement, it was time to look at the broader and deeper meanings of environmentalism and where it&#8217;s going. And, you know, I do history. And it was a great pleasure and honor and challenge taking on this history. It&#8217;s sort of the largest movement the world&#8217;s ever witnessed, but so atomized and episodic that you don&#8217;t really—it doesn&#8217;t really have a sense of, you know, its larger meaning and place and what it&#8217;s about. And that was the idea, was to take on the meaning of the movement.
AMY GOODMAN : Well, we&#8217;re going to share some of the stories of these movements. We&#8217;re going to go in A Fierce Green Fire first to that battle that was led by Lois Gibbs, who would become famous for leading housewives against some 20,000 tons of toxic waste dumped by Hooker Chemical in their community of Love Canal, a neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York. They first learned the chemicals were seeping into their homes and water, making their children sick—they learned this in 1976. This part of the film is narrated by the actress Ashley Judd. It starts, though, with Lois Gibbs herself.
LOIS GIBBS : You are murderers! Each and every one of you in this room are murderers!
PROTESTERS : We want out! We want out! We want out! We want out!
LOIS GIBBS : When Love Canal came, it was a new segment of the movement. It wasn&#8217;t that we don&#8217;t care about the forest. It was the people focus that set us aside from the other elements that had come before us, and really the focus on if the fish are dying and if the birds are dying, then we&#8217;re going to die.
ASHLEY JUDD : Buried beneath the neighborhood were 20,000 tons of poisonous chemicals dumped in an old canal by Hooker Chemical Corporation. Reports of trouble began in 1976, but Love Canal did not explode until Michael Brown, a journalist at the Niagara Gazette , wrote articles exposing the problem. They caught the eye of Lois Gibbs.
LOIS GIBBS : I read a newspaper article, and Love Canal had 20,000 tons of chemicals buried in it, and that it was leaking into the neighborhood. And so I read this newspaper, and I said, &quot;Oh, those poor people.&quot; The next day, there was another article, and in that one it talked about the 99th Street Elementary School, and I was like, &quot;Oh, my goodness. That&#8217;s where Michael&#8217;s going to kindergarten. That&#8217;s why Michael&#8217;s so sick.&quot;
ASHLEY JUDD : Lois tried to get her son transferred to another school, but the superintendent refused.
LOIS GIBBS : When I met with Dr. Long, he said, &quot;I am not about to move 407 children because of one irate, hysterical housewife with a sickly kid.&quot;
ASHLEY JUDD : Instead, Lois began to circulate a petition to close the school. She went door to door, discovering the extent of the damage.
LOIS GIBBS : I was shocked. I was absolutely shocked. I thought I was the only one with a sickly child. I thought I was the only family that was affected by these leaking chemicals from Love Canal. In their basement, you could see where the chemical residue just comes up through the basement floor and just pools there. And it smells. It smells like a chemical factory. It&#8217;s nasty.
This hole just popped up, and this is what we feel is causing a lot of the birth defects and the miscarriages and health problems in the area.
MARGE BATES : In &#8217;76—it was before Love Canal broke—I got pregnant. I carried the child for nine months. The baby weighed three pounds, and it was a stillborn birth.
LOVE CANAL RESIDENT : I&#8217;ve had two miscarriages. I had a miscarriage living in this house, and I had a miscarriage when I worked for Hooker Chemical. My god, and I almost panicked. I couldn&#8217;t believe it. Both my children were born premature.
ASHLEY JUDD : When Lois took her case to the state, officials surprised her with an emergency declaration to evacuate the nearest homes. However, the outer ring of homes surrounding Love Canal—800 families—were given nothing.
LOVE CANAL RESIDENT : Would you please tell me: Do I let my three-year-old stay? She has a birth defect now.
LOVE CANAL RESIDENT : What are you going to do for my kid? What are you going to do? Nothing. Think the damage is done, man. The damage is done.
ASHLEY JUDD : The state bought the inner ring of houses. Then they put up a fence and began to excavate. Love Canal residents outside the fence felt trapped.
INTERVIEWER : When did the state tell you to stop growing your vegetable garden?
GRACE McGOULF: In August of &#8217;78.
INTERVIEWER : So they weren&#8217;t willing to move you out, but they were willing to tell you to stop growing vegetables?
GRACE McGOULF: Yeah, willing to tell us not to have the kids go barefooted, not to have them go in the basement, don&#8217;t plant a garden, but enjoy your house. Live there with your family, while we continue doing our tests and use you as guinea pigs.
ASHLEY JUDD : The Love Canal residents decided to do their own health study and found an alarming increase in disease and birth defects.
LOIS GIBBS : We truly believed, if we can prove that there was an increase in disease, they, meaning the government, will do the right thing. And we found that 56 percent of the children in our community were born with birth defects. Fifty-six percent of our children had three ears, double rows of teeth, extra fingers, extra toes or were mentally retarded. During that study time, there were 22 women who were pregnant, and of those 22 pregnancies, only four normal babies were born. And the Health Department literally threw the health study on the floor—I mean, literally, took it and just threw it on the floor and said, &quot;It&#8217;s useless housewife data collected by people who have a vested interest in the outcome.&quot;
ASHLEY JUDD : The New York State Health Department was prodded into doing its own health study and presented their findings to a packed meeting in Love Canal.
LOIS GIBBS : The health commissioner took the stage and said, &quot;We found that 56 percent of the children in Love Canal were born with birth defects.&quot; And we&#8217;re secretly, as sick as it sounds, saying, &quot;Yes, yes! And now you&#8217;re going to evacuate us, right?&quot; I mean, that&#8217;s what we&#8217;re hoping for. And then he says, &quot;But we don&#8217;t believe those birth defects are related to Love Canal.&quot; And it&#8217;s—just the whole audience, you could hear was: &quot;Huh?&quot; I mean, it was just like—and it&#8217;s like, &quot;We believe that those birth defects are related to a random clustering of genetically defected people.&quot;
ASHLEY JUDD : For the residents, Love Canal became a two-year struggle to get relocated. Lois Gibbs pushed relentlessly and finally forced the state to bring in the federal government. The Environment Protection Agency launched a pilot study of chromosome damage. The results of the tests were explosive.
LOIS GIBBS : Chromosome damage means my two children may be genetically damaged as a result of Love Canal. That was the straw that broke the camel&#8217;s back.
EPA REPRESENTATIVE : We&#8217;ll then decide whether this evidence, added to the cumulative knowledge that we already have from other health and environment studies at Love Canal, justifies a recommendation for relocation of the residents or other appropriate actions to assist those in the area.
LOVE CANAL RESIDENT : It seems to me that the federal government has finally, after two years, come up to the high-level thinking of housewives that they have constantly put down. We know what&#8217;s going on. We did research, too. And we want out of there. We want our kids out. Not on Wednesday. Today.
ASHLEY JUDD : The EPA recommended relocation, but the White House blocked the emergency declaration. The residents of Love Canal demanded an explanation. When EPA officials arrived, they decided to take them hostage.
LOIS GIBBS : Just pass the word around. Nobody—we&#8217;re not going to do anything violent. We&#8217;re just going to keep them in the house. Nothing more than that, body-barricade the doors. OK?
PROTESTER : OK.
LOIS GIBBS : Pass the word. And don&#8217;t let them out.
PROTESTER : No one&#8217;s coming out.
PROTESTER : Come on, guys! Sit.
LOIS GIBBS : If I was to let the two EPA representatives come out this door, does anybody know what would happen to them?
PROTESTER : We&#8217;d tear them apart!
FRANK NEPAL : I guess I&#8217;m here for the duration.
REPORTER : Meaning what, the duration?
FRANK NEPAL : Well, I guess until the White House gives the homeowners some sort of answer.
LOIS GIBBS : Well, I call up the White House. The lady started giving me this lecture about how Love Canal residents have blown it out of proportion and lots of people die of cancer, and we should just—I&#8217;m like, &quot;You know, lady, if I was a crazy, I&#8217;d kill these hostages.&quot; And I hung up the phone. I&#8217;m thinking, like, I am crazy.
REPORTER : Homeowners association president Lois Gibbs spoke with Congressman John LaFalce in Washington to try to get some answers. LaFalce is set to meet with President Carter at this hour at a dinner meeting at the White House. We should have more information...
LOIS GIBBS : I went out on the front porch and said, &quot;OK, guys, the president hears us. He&#8217;s going to hear from our congressman. I think we should let them go, and I think we should let them go with a very strong warning.&quot;
I have told the White House—and this is upon your approval—that we will allow the two EPA representatives to leave, but if we do not have a disaster declaration Wednesday by noon, then what they have seen here today is just a Sesame Street picnic in comparison.
ASHLEY JUDD : Two days later, Lois called the White House. Amazingly enough, her ultimatum worked.
LOIS GIBBS : An emergency to permit the federal government and the state of New York to undertake...
And then, all of a sudden, she said, &quot;And we will grant temporary relocation.&quot; I&#8217;m like, &quot;And we will grant temporary relocation&quot;—all of a sudden it was just like even the birds, I swear, weren&#8217;t singing—&quot;until we can get permanent relocation money allocated, but permanent relocation is the goal.&quot;
DEBBIE CERILLO : Here&#8217;s to the homeowners and all their hard work, huh?
ASHLEY JUDD : At last, President Carter came to Love Canal to sign the agreement buying out the homeowners.
PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER : The whole question of a disposal of hazardous waste, especially toxic chemicals, is going to be one of the great environmental challenges of the 1980s. There must never be in our country another Love Canal. Thank you very much.
AMY GOODMAN : Yes, that was President Jimmy Carter and, throughout the excerpt, Lois Gibbs and others who led the struggle to take on Hooker Chemical in Love Canal, a community in Niagara Falls, New York. The story is told in A Fierce Green Fire , a film that tells the history of the environmental movement through these different struggles. In this Earth Day special, when we come back, we&#8217;ll look at Greenpeace and its battle to save the whales, as well as Chico Mendes and the rubber tappers of Brazil fighting to save the Amazon. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN : This is Democracy Now! , democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report . I&#8217;m Amy Goodman. Yes, today is Earth Day, and we&#8217;re looking at key moments in the history of the environmental movement as told in the new film A Fierce Green Fire , directed by Mark Kitchell. It&#8217;s airing tonight on PBS American Masters . As we turn now to another extended excerpt about a ragtag group of ecologists who helped launch the group Greenpeace—their first campaign, a fight to save the whales. In this excerpt, we bring you Greenpeace co-founders Rex Weyler, Paul Watson and Bob Hunter. It&#8217;s narrated by Van Jones, President Obama&#8217;s former green jobs czar.
VAN JONES : In 1975, Greenpeace set off to hunt the whalers. After two months at sea, they came upon the Russian whaling fleet.
REX WEYLER : There&#8217;s five over there. There&#8217;s on by the Vostok , and there&#8217;s three over here. There&#8217;s nine chasers altogether.
We&#8217;re coming upon a floating slaughterhouse. There&#8217;s blood in the water. There&#8217;s huge slabs of blubber being hauled up on these big factory ships. Blood is just pouring out of this pipe. And the stench alone made us all want to throw up.
PAUL WATSON : Suddenly, Bob and I were in a small boat in front of a Soviet harpoon vessel that was bearing down on us. In front of us is eight magnificent sperm whales that were fleeing for their life. And every time the harpooner tried to get a shot, I was at the helm so I would maneuver the boat to try and block the harpoon.
REX WEYLER : Here&#8217;s the whales. Here&#8217;s us in our Zodiacs. And here&#8217;s the Russian ship. We are right between the Soviet ship and the whales. And the harpooner&#8217;s not shooting, but eventually somebody from the bridge walks down the catwalk and talks to the harpooner, and the harpooner nods, and the guy goes back. And Bob looks in his eyes, and he knows: This guy&#8217;s going to shoot this harpoon.
PAUL WATSON : The he looked at us and smiled and brought his finger across his neck. And that&#8217;s when I realized Gandhi wasn&#8217;t going to pull through for us that day.
REX WEYLER : And at that very moment, they fire the harpoon.
PAUL WATSON : This harpoon flew over our head and slammed into the backside of one of the whales. And she screamed. It was a very human-like screen, like a woman. And it took us completely off guard.
REX WEYLER : The whalers purposefully shoot at the female first, because they know that the bull whales will attack them. And then, when the bull whales come to attack them, which is exactly what happened...
PAUL WATSON : He was waiting for them and very nonchalantly pulled the trigger and sent a second harpoon into the head of the whale. And he screamed and fell back. And now the water&#8217;s full of blood everywhere from the two dying whales. And as this whale lay and, you know, rolled in agony on the surface of the ocean, I caught his eye, and he looked straight at me.
REX WEYLER : And we&#8217;re looking into the eye of this huge sperm whale. And I have to tell you, it—it&#8217;s sort of beyond emotional. You know, when you—there are certain moments that are so emotional, you&#8217;re just in brand new territory.
PAUL WATSON : Why were the Russians killing these whales? You know, they didn&#8217;t eat sperm whale meat, but they did use the spermaceti oil to make high-heat-resistant lubricating oil for machinery. And one of the pieces of machinery that they used it in is the manufacture of intercontinental ballistic missiles. And I said, &quot;Here we are destroying this incredibly beautiful, intelligent, socially complex creature for the purpose of making a weapon meant for the mass destruction of humanity.&quot; And that&#8217;s when I—it came to me with a—you know, like a flash, that we&#8217;re insane. We&#8217;re just totally insane. And from that moment on, I decided that I work for whales, I work for seals, I work for sea turtles and fish and seabirds. I don&#8217;t work for people.
REX WEYLER : The story just exploded. And I think it was because people were seen, for the first time, not just standing up for the dispossessed humans, standing up for the dispossessed everything else in the world, every other species in the world that has been dispossessed by the industrial civilization of humankind.
VAN JONES : Greenpeace&#8217;s new style of media-oriented activism launched them into the wildest ride of any environmental group.
REX WEYLER : We were out there trying to make the whales famous, but in the process we made ourselves famous. We were now able to talk about ecology, and we were able to raise money. Now we were able to do a seal campaign and a toxic dumping campaign. Offices were springing up all over the world calling themselves Greenpeace.
VAN JONES : Their critics claimed that they were better at dramatizing issues than effecting change. But Greenpeace saw the media as the best means of changing consciousness. They called it dropping mind bombs.
BOB HUNTER : My idea was that if you took an image and you passed it through the media into the mass mind, you could essentially blow the mass mind with new images that would create whole new ways of looking at the world. And the image of small whales up against giant whaling machines was a mind bomb.
VAN JONES : In 1976, Greenpeace dreamed up their next campaign: to save baby harp seals in Newfoundland.
REX WEYLER : We used the same tactics that we used with the whaling campaigns: We actually got out on the ice, blockaded the sealing ships.
BOB HUNTER : We&#8217;re blocking the boat.
PAUL WATSON : He&#8217;s backed out three times and came forward already, trying to bluff us off.
BOB HUNTER : No, he might just be lining up for a big one soon.
VAN JONES : The first year, they ran into furious opposition, especially over Paul&#8217;s plan to spray dye on the seal pups, rendering the pelts worthless.
PAUL WATSON : That&#8217;s, I think, where I had a first falling out with Bob, really, because they compromised with the Newfoundlanders, you know, and said, &quot;Well, we&#8217;re not going to dye the seals if you don&#8217;t do this.&quot; And I got real—you know, they didn&#8217;t consult with me on it, so I was quite angry on it. I don&#8217;t believe in compromising.
VAN JONES : Paul was bitter. He came back the next year determined to stop the slaughter.
PAUL WATSON : On the second seal campaign in &#39;77, you know, I pulled a sealing club out of a sealer&#39;s hand, threw it in the water. I handcuffed myself to the pile of pelts to try and shut down their operations. They pulled the pelts into the water and pulled me through the water and up the side of the boat and dangled me from the air, and then they dropped me back in the water. And then they brought me up on the deck, and then they pulled me along the deck as these sealers were spitting and kicking and punching. Captain came in and started screaming at me about how, you know, it was people like me that ended whaling and, you know, &quot;Now you&#8217;re trying to take sealing away from us.&quot;
VAN JONES : Soon after the second seal campaign, Paul Watson was thrown out of Greenpeace for breaching their ethic of nonviolence. He had gone too far. Paul vowed to pursue the whalers without compromise. He set up his own group, the Sea Shepherd Society, and got himself a ship. The first thing he did was hunt down the Sierra , an illegal pirate whaler. Off the coast of Portugal, he found her.
PAUL WATSON : I hit the Sierra at the bow to get its attention and to destroy the harpoon, then did a 360-degree turn around its stern and slammed into its side at 15 knots and split it open to the water line. That ship had killed 25,000 whales. What we are able to do in one year was to shut down every single pirate whaling vessel in the Atlantic. At the end of that one-year period, three of them were on the bottom, two of them were going to be sunk by the South African navy, and one of them had been sold.
VAN JONES : Then Sea Shepherd went after whaling nations, scuttling Spanish, Norwegian and Icelandic whalers.
PAUL WATSON : In 1986, when we sank half of Iceland&#8217;s whaling fleet, John Frizell from Greenpeace came up to me. He said, &quot;Just want to let you know that what you did in Iceland was despicable, reprehensible, criminal and unforgivable.&quot; And I said, &quot;So?&quot; And he said, &quot;Well, you should know what people in this movement think about you.&quot; I says, &quot;I don&#8217;t give a damn, John. I didn&#8217;t sink those whaling vessels for you or anybody in the movement. We sank those whaling vessels for the whales. Find me one whale that disagreed with what we did, and we&#8217;ll reconsider. But until then, I couldn&#8217;t give a damn what you people think.&quot;
VAN JONES : It took everyone working together to ban whaling. For 10 years, radicals and mainstream, governments and NGOs campaigned to turn the International Whaling Commission from hunting to saving whales.
BOY : Why should we kill them if they&#8217;re just—it&#8217;s just like killing us?
GIRL : But they&#8217;re just nice creatures. They&#8217;re nice. They wouldn&#8217;t harm anyone, really.
INTERNATIONAL WHALING COMMISSION DELEGATE : What we are proposing is a moratorium.
VAN JONES : A moratorium finally passed in 1982. And in time, it became a permanent ban on whaling, one of environmentalism&#8217;s biggest successes.
AMY GOODMAN : That was Van Jones narrating an excerpt of the film A Fierce Green Fire , which tells the history of the environmental movement for more than the past half-century and airs tonight on PBS American Masters . We&#8217;re joined by its director, Mark Kitchell. Mark, that story, the Greenpeace chapter, if you will, is one of five in this film, which you call A Fierce Green Fire . Why?
MARK KITCHELL : Oh, there&#8217;s a famous story. It happened about a century ago in—a young ranger named Aldo Leopold, whose job was to kill predators, he shot a wolf. And he went down the hill to see a fierce green fire in her eyes as she was dying. And that was his awakening. And he wrote a famous essay about it called &quot;Thinking Like a Mountain.&quot; But for us, we think of a fierce green fire as the movement, the environmental movement, and that&#8217;s the way we use it in the film. And that&#8217;s what we were really trying to do in this film that makes it different from other environmental films that are more issue-driven. We were really looking to tell stories of the movement, and we thought it would be a more engaging and impassioned approach to what are very difficult subjects. You know, usually, environmental films, no matter how good they are, are an eco-bummer. It&#8217;s always about a problem and a crisis, and ends with a plea for help. In this, we thought people could really identify with people like Lois Gibbs and Paul Watson and really get the passion. And these people succeeded against enormous odds, and that should give us some kind of hope that we can deal with such overwhelming problems like climate change and the sixth great extinction and trying to create a sustainable revolution to save human society.
AMY GOODMAN : We&#8217;re going to break and then come back to another of the chapters of this film about the remarkable rubber tapper Chico Mendes and his fight in the Brazilian rainforest to save the Amazon. Mark Kitchell is the director of A Fierce Green Fire . We&#8217;ll be back in a moment.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN : Yes, today is Earth Day, and we&#8217;re looking at the history of the environmental movement as told in a new film by Mark Kitchell that airs tonight across the country on PBS . It&#8217;s called A Fierce Green Fire . This final extended excerpt looks at a turning point in the fight to save the Amazon rainforest. It is a campaign led by Chico Mendes and the rubber tappers who are fighting to save their rubber trees from loggers. Chico Mendes wins, but is assassinated. The clip is narrated by the Chilean novelist Isabel Allende. It includes comments from Barbara Bramble of the National Wildlife Federation; José Lutzenberger, a Brazilian environmentalist; and Senator Robert Kasten. But first, Chico Mendes himself.
ADRIAN COWELL : [translated] Have you always been a seringueiro?
CHICO MENDES : [translated] Always. My father was a seringueiro. I started at nine years old, and for 20 years I was a full-time seringueiro. It was only in 1975, when the ranchers arrived, that I joined the union and cut less rubber.
ISABEL ALLENDE : The rubber tappers, known as seringueiros, squatted off the old seringals, or plantations, produced rubber and subsisted off the land. They were protected by being in the remote western Amazon, where roads had not penetrated. But as ranchers arrived and began clearing the land to claim it for tax breaks, Chico Mendes organized the rubber tappers to defend their territory.
CHICO MENDES : [translated] The ranchers&#8217; aim was to take all this land. But we won&#8217;t let them have it. We&#8217;ll fight to the end. We won&#8217;t allow our forests to be destroyed.
ISABEL ALLENDE : The rubber tappers organized empates , or standoffs, nonviolent protests in the tradition of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, where they surrounded the trees and tried to explain what a disaster cutting down the forest was for everyone.
RAIMUNDO DE BARROS : [translated] Comrade, come here. Don&#8217;t be nervous.
CREW CHIEF : [translated] I&#8217;m not frightened.
RAIMUNDO DE BARROS : [translated] Of course not. You&#8217;re a worker like us. The ranchers&#8217; aim is to get everything. Once they destroy this natural wealth, which belongs to seringueiros, as well as you and all workers, it&#8217;s wonderful for them, because everywhere will be fenced and full of cattle. Then how will we live?
CHICO MENDES : [translated] You&#8217;re not ranch gunmen, but workers earning money.
BARBARA BRAMBLE : They actually were able to stop the forest cutting by standing in front of the trees. It&#8217;s a real heroic story. And it happened often enough that it actually impeded an entire cattle-ranching operation so much that they gave up.
CHICO MENDES : [translated] There are other landowners. But for the first time, we&#8217;ve won a victory against the Bordon group, the most powerful of the region. We&#8217;ve succeeded in defending most of a seringueiro&#8217;s territory.
ISABEL ALLENDE : American environmentalists helped bring Chico Mendes to the United States to campaign against the World Bank, whose loans led to destructive development.
JOSÉ LUTZENBERGER : The World Bank wants us to believe that they are helping the people in those areas. Now, this is a big lie and an infamous lie. The opposite is true: The people living in the forests, they have an interest in their preservation.
PROTESTERS : Save the rainforest! Save the rainforest! Save the rainforest! Save the rainforest!
CHICO MENDES : [translated] I hope that the governments which give money to the IDB , the people of the U.S., England, Japan, Europe, who contribute their taxes to finance the IDB , will listen to the seringueiros&#8217; complaints.
SEN . ROBERT KASTEN : Our subcommittee is going to continue to put pressure on the IDB to withhold funds, to cut off all funds, possibly, if they are not more cooperative.
ELECTIONEERING CAR IN RIO BRANCO : [translated] Chico Mendes, in defense of the Amazon forest, against the devastation of the jungle and expulsion of its people, for the creation of extractive reserves.
ISABEL ALLENDE : Chico was coming to understand that saving their way of life meant saving the Amazon. He began to build alliances with other rubber tappers and indigenous groups.
BARBARA BRAMBLE : Several leaders and Chico decided to hold a meeting to try to form a national council of rubber tappers. What they all came to the conclusion of was that they needed to have rights to use the land, that one of the things that was keeping them from being able to effectively defend the forest against the chainsaw loggers and the cattle ranchers was not having an actual right to this land. They were seen as squatters.
ADRIAN COWELL : The idea was raised that there should be rubber tapper reserves, like Indian reserves. The people wouldn&#8217;t own the land, but it would be theirs for as long as they wanted to work it. It was an idea of the people who actually lived in the forest. That was a huge breakthrough in concept. This is a great movement within Amazonia, and that&#8217;s what Chico started.
ISABEL ALLENDE : The rubber tappers decided to establish the first reserve at Cachoeira, the old rubber plantation where Chico was born and lived with family and friends. However, the land had been bought by a rancher named Darli Alves, so the seringueros went to court to claim their squatter rights. It turned into a showdown.
DARLI ALVES : [translated] Xapuri ranchers have always had trouble with seringueiros blocking their deforestation. Every time the ranchers tried to deforest, they were blocked. In Xapuri, it&#8217;s stalemate.
CHICO MENDES : [translated] We are in immediate danger. We&#8217;re seeing people killed. And there could be many more. The Parana ranch is terrorizing the whole population of Xapuri to strike at me, at Comercindo, at Haymundabajos, and the whole directorate of our workers&#8217; movement.
Even though we want this to be peaceful, it may come to the point where the peaceful side won&#8217;t work, and we can&#8217;t be demoralized. We will go to the confrontation knowing someone may lose his life. Will you be with me?
ISABEL ALLENDE : The rubber tappers won. Cachoeira was declared the first extractive reserve in the world. It was an important victory to the whole of the Amazon. But the rancher Darli Alves had vowed to kill Chico Mendes.
FRIAR LUIS CIPPI : [translated] This has not been a bloodless journey. Some have already fallen defending extractive reserves. No one likes to die. But if it has to happen, then it should be to create more life. Christ was crucified. He gave his last drop of blood. But since that day, millions of communities have been born that believe and fight for brotherhood.
RUBBER TAPPERS : [translated] I promise, before the blood of our companion Chico Mendes, to continue his work, to show our enemies that they will never succeed in silencing the voice of the seringueiros. Chico Mendes, wherever you are, don&#8217;t grieve that they have silenced your voice. Your ideas exist among us.
BARBARA BRAMBLE : There were things that came together after his death that probably couldn&#8217;t have come together if he was still alive, because they&#8217;d still be fighting over whether the extractive reserves should be established or not. After he was killed, there was no question. So now it&#8217;s quite clear that who saves forests are the people in the forest.
PROTESTERS : Lula president! Chico Mendes is with us! Lula president! Chico Mendes is with us!
ISABEL ALLENDE : Chico Mendes&#8217; work proved to be the turning point in the battle to save the Amazon. The Brazilian government recognized the rights of the forest peoples and established an array of parks and protected areas. Fifty-eight million acres were set aside in extractive reserves. Forty percent of the Brazilian Amazon was formally protected. However, the fate of the forest is still in doubt. Now it is not just cattle ranchers, but soy farming on an industrial scale and illegal logging. Due to the partial deforestation and the climate changes it has brought, the Amazon is drying out.
AMY GOODMAN : That excerpt narrated by the Chilean novelist Isabel Allende. It is from A Fierce Green Fire , a film that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and will air tonight on PBS . Yes, today is Earth Day. The film looks at the environmental movement over more than the last half-century, and it&#8217;s directed by Mark Kitchell, who we end with today. Mark, talk about your choices. These chapters in the film—on Greenpeace, on the rubber tappers and Chico Mendes, on Love Canal—talk about the final chapter and then how you chose these as emblematic of the environmental movement.
MARK KITCHELL : Well, the final act is climate change, the mother of all environmental issues, so big that it overwhelms everything else. And we tell that 25-year struggle to deal with it, the largest problem that the world&#8217;s ever faced. It&#8217;s largely a tale of frustration. Bill McKibben talks about the inability of the movement to deal with the issue for most of the &#8217;90s. We go on from Copenhagen and sort of explore bottom-up movements versus top-down political failure, and really try and make the point that we need the bottom-up, the grassroots, pressure to force change from the top.
And Paul Hawken, with his brilliant ideas from Blessed Unrest , talks about how there&#8217;s probably two million groups worldwide working on these issues of environmental justice and the environment and indigenous rights and how they&#8217;re all connected. And he uses a metaphor of the movement being humanity&#8217;s immune response system. And I just think that&#8217;s a brilliant way to characterize a movement. It&#8217;s sort of a movement like we&#8217;ve never seen before in this world.
And it&#8217;s headed for bigger things. And, you know, we wanted to do an act six. We wanted to take on the future, and we tried various endings, and we could never fit it in. We had to get the film over. And so we just decided that we&#8217;ve got to do A Fierce Green Future , another film, and really take on that sustainable revolution, if you will.
I think ultimately this is about civilizational transformation. It&#8217;s going to be as big a change as the Industrial Revolution. And the task before us is to create a society that&#8217;s sort of moving from our industrial basis to a world in which we&#8217;re in sustainable balance with the natural world. I think that&#8217;s the only way we can survive. And I think this is just the first 50 years of it.
AMY GOODMAN : Mark Kitchell, I want to thank you for being with us, director of A Fierce Green Fire , which airs on PBS American Masters tonight at 9:00 p.m. Eastern, tonight, on this day, Earth Day. You can visit our website for a link to local listings. Today is Earth Day. And you can tell us how you&#8217;re involved, if you are, with the environmental movement, who inspires you. Go to our Facebook page , and on Twitter , you can use the hashtag #discussDN. AMYGOODMAN: Today is Earth Day. It began in 1970 as a "National Teach-In on the Crisis of the Environment" and has grown to become a worldwide day of action. Forty years ago, one in 10 Americans participated in Earth Day. This year an estimated one billion people will join in around the world.

This year’s Earth Day comes as new research published in PLOSONE highlights the connection between pollution and racial injustice. Nationwide, people of color on average are exposed to 38 percent higher levels of outdoor nitrogen dioxide pollution than whites, a difference that amounts to an estimated 7,000 deaths per year from heart disease. Another study shows the number of major wildfires in the western United States has dramatically increased due to drought and rising temperatures from climate change. The findings published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters show the number of large wildfires rose from 1984 to 2011 at a rate of seven fires per year. Earlier this month, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned the world has just 15 years to stave off the most devastating impacts of climate change.

Well, today, we spend the hour looking at the history of the environmental movement. It’s told in the new film A Fierce Green Fire.

ELIZABETHRETTON: I carried a child for nine months. Our little Julie was stillborn. The loss of our child may be a direct result to the chemicals. Please don’t allow this to happen to anyone else before you get them out.

JOHNADAMS: Raw sewage was going right down the Hudson River. Air pollution was growing just as fast as new automobiles were coming out.

DOUGSCOTT: The dams in the Grand Canyon, that was going to be a fight to the death.

MARTINLITTON: They were going to take the water out of the river. All of it.

RACHELCARSON: To these people, apparently, the balance of nature was something that was repealed as soon as man came on the scene.

JAMESFARMER: If we do not save the environment, then whatever we do in civil right will be of no meaning, because then we will have the equality of extinction.

JOHNADAMS: All of a sudden, people said, "Wait a second. This is not how we have to live."

LOISGIBBS: If I was to let the two EPA representatives come out this door, does anybody know what would happen to them?

PRESIDENTRONALDREAGAN: There is environmental extremism. I don’t think they’ll be happy until the White House looks like a bird’s nest.

REPORTER: The protesters were told not to block the trucks. They are now lying in the streets now blocking one truck.

REXWEYLER: It wasn’t just a matter of holding up signs saying "stop killing the whales." No, Greenpeace wanted to get out there in front of the whaling boats and stop them.

STEWARTBRAND: They were reinventing civilization and did not know how. And I didn’t either, but I figured we might find out.

VIJAYANAGARAJAN: How do you hold forests in common, when every other force around you is trying to get you to privatize?

WANGARIMAATHAI: We are going to shed blood because of our land. We will. Our forefathers shed blood for our land.

BILL McKIBBEN: Americans understood what was going on and what the danger was, but still nothing happening in Washington. Not a damn thing.

STEPHENSCHNEIDER: I don’t know. Do we have to have a hurricane take out Miami and Shanghai to have everybody wake up? If it happened next year, it might be possible to still do that. What a hell of a way to run a planet.

AMYGOODMAN: That’s the trailer for A Fierce Green Fire. Yes, today is Earth Day, and we’re looking at the history of the environmental movement as told in this sweeping documentary that airs tonight on PBSAmerican Masters. Today we’re featuring extended excerpts from the film, including a look at one of the first battles over a toxic waste dump. It may surprise you to know that it was led by housewives, led by Lois Gibbs. We’ll also look at Greenpeace’s campaigns to save whales and baby harp seals, and later, a fight by Chico Mendes and the Brazilian rubber tappers to save the Amazon rainforest. But in San Francisco, we’re joined by the director of A Fierce Green Fire, Mark Kitchell.

Mark, welcome to Democracy Now! Talk about the scope of this film and why you decided to make A Fierce Green Fire.

MARKKITCHELL: Well, we saw that nobody had made a sort of big picture overview, a history, an exploration of the environmental movement. And that was the basic impulse. We figured, 50 years into this movement, it was time to look at the broader and deeper meanings of environmentalism and where it’s going. And, you know, I do history. And it was a great pleasure and honor and challenge taking on this history. It’s sort of the largest movement the world’s ever witnessed, but so atomized and episodic that you don’t really—it doesn’t really have a sense of, you know, its larger meaning and place and what it’s about. And that was the idea, was to take on the meaning of the movement.

AMYGOODMAN: Well, we’re going to share some of the stories of these movements. We’re going to go in A Fierce Green Fire first to that battle that was led by Lois Gibbs, who would become famous for leading housewives against some 20,000 tons of toxic waste dumped by Hooker Chemical in their community of Love Canal, a neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York. They first learned the chemicals were seeping into their homes and water, making their children sick—they learned this in 1976. This part of the film is narrated by the actress Ashley Judd. It starts, though, with Lois Gibbs herself.

LOISGIBBS: You are murderers! Each and every one of you in this room are murderers!

PROTESTERS: We want out! We want out! We want out! We want out!

LOISGIBBS: When Love Canal came, it was a new segment of the movement. It wasn’t that we don’t care about the forest. It was the people focus that set us aside from the other elements that had come before us, and really the focus on if the fish are dying and if the birds are dying, then we’re going to die.

ASHLEYJUDD: Buried beneath the neighborhood were 20,000 tons of poisonous chemicals dumped in an old canal by Hooker Chemical Corporation. Reports of trouble began in 1976, but Love Canal did not explode until Michael Brown, a journalist at the Niagara Gazette, wrote articles exposing the problem. They caught the eye of Lois Gibbs.

LOISGIBBS: I read a newspaper article, and Love Canal had 20,000 tons of chemicals buried in it, and that it was leaking into the neighborhood. And so I read this newspaper, and I said, "Oh, those poor people." The next day, there was another article, and in that one it talked about the 99th Street Elementary School, and I was like, "Oh, my goodness. That’s where Michael’s going to kindergarten. That’s why Michael’s so sick."

ASHLEYJUDD: Lois tried to get her son transferred to another school, but the superintendent refused.

LOISGIBBS: When I met with Dr. Long, he said, "I am not about to move 407 children because of one irate, hysterical housewife with a sickly kid."

ASHLEYJUDD: Instead, Lois began to circulate a petition to close the school. She went door to door, discovering the extent of the damage.

LOISGIBBS: I was shocked. I was absolutely shocked. I thought I was the only one with a sickly child. I thought I was the only family that was affected by these leaking chemicals from Love Canal. In their basement, you could see where the chemical residue just comes up through the basement floor and just pools there. And it smells. It smells like a chemical factory. It’s nasty.

This hole just popped up, and this is what we feel is causing a lot of the birth defects and the miscarriages and health problems in the area.

MARGEBATES: In ’76—it was before Love Canal broke—I got pregnant. I carried the child for nine months. The baby weighed three pounds, and it was a stillborn birth.

LOVECANALRESIDENT: I’ve had two miscarriages. I had a miscarriage living in this house, and I had a miscarriage when I worked for Hooker Chemical. My god, and I almost panicked. I couldn’t believe it. Both my children were born premature.

ASHLEYJUDD: When Lois took her case to the state, officials surprised her with an emergency declaration to evacuate the nearest homes. However, the outer ring of homes surrounding Love Canal—800 families—were given nothing.

LOVECANALRESIDENT: Would you please tell me: Do I let my three-year-old stay? She has a birth defect now.

LOVECANALRESIDENT: What are you going to do for my kid? What are you going to do? Nothing. Think the damage is done, man. The damage is done.

ASHLEYJUDD: The state bought the inner ring of houses. Then they put up a fence and began to excavate. Love Canal residents outside the fence felt trapped.

INTERVIEWER: When did the state tell you to stop growing your vegetable garden?

GRACE McGOULF: In August of ’78.

INTERVIEWER: So they weren’t willing to move you out, but they were willing to tell you to stop growing vegetables?

GRACE McGOULF: Yeah, willing to tell us not to have the kids go barefooted, not to have them go in the basement, don’t plant a garden, but enjoy your house. Live there with your family, while we continue doing our tests and use you as guinea pigs.

ASHLEYJUDD: The Love Canal residents decided to do their own health study and found an alarming increase in disease and birth defects.

LOISGIBBS: We truly believed, if we can prove that there was an increase in disease, they, meaning the government, will do the right thing. And we found that 56 percent of the children in our community were born with birth defects. Fifty-six percent of our children had three ears, double rows of teeth, extra fingers, extra toes or were mentally retarded. During that study time, there were 22 women who were pregnant, and of those 22 pregnancies, only four normal babies were born. And the Health Department literally threw the health study on the floor—I mean, literally, took it and just threw it on the floor and said, "It’s useless housewife data collected by people who have a vested interest in the outcome."

ASHLEYJUDD: The New York State Health Department was prodded into doing its own health study and presented their findings to a packed meeting in Love Canal.

LOISGIBBS: The health commissioner took the stage and said, "We found that 56 percent of the children in Love Canal were born with birth defects." And we’re secretly, as sick as it sounds, saying, "Yes, yes! And now you’re going to evacuate us, right?" I mean, that’s what we’re hoping for. And then he says, "But we don’t believe those birth defects are related to Love Canal." And it’s—just the whole audience, you could hear was: "Huh?" I mean, it was just like—and it’s like, "We believe that those birth defects are related to a random clustering of genetically defected people."

ASHLEYJUDD: For the residents, Love Canal became a two-year struggle to get relocated. Lois Gibbs pushed relentlessly and finally forced the state to bring in the federal government. The Environment Protection Agency launched a pilot study of chromosome damage. The results of the tests were explosive.

LOISGIBBS: Chromosome damage means my two children may be genetically damaged as a result of Love Canal. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

EPAREPRESENTATIVE: We’ll then decide whether this evidence, added to the cumulative knowledge that we already have from other health and environment studies at Love Canal, justifies a recommendation for relocation of the residents or other appropriate actions to assist those in the area.

LOVECANALRESIDENT: It seems to me that the federal government has finally, after two years, come up to the high-level thinking of housewives that they have constantly put down. We know what’s going on. We did research, too. And we want out of there. We want our kids out. Not on Wednesday. Today.

ASHLEYJUDD: The EPA recommended relocation, but the White House blocked the emergency declaration. The residents of Love Canal demanded an explanation. When EPA officials arrived, they decided to take them hostage.

LOISGIBBS: Just pass the word around. Nobody—we’re not going to do anything violent. We’re just going to keep them in the house. Nothing more than that, body-barricade the doors. OK?

PROTESTER: OK.

LOISGIBBS: Pass the word. And don’t let them out.

PROTESTER: No one’s coming out.

PROTESTER: Come on, guys! Sit.

LOISGIBBS: If I was to let the two EPA representatives come out this door, does anybody know what would happen to them?

PROTESTER: We’d tear them apart!

FRANKNEPAL: I guess I’m here for the duration.

REPORTER: Meaning what, the duration?

FRANKNEPAL: Well, I guess until the White House gives the homeowners some sort of answer.

LOISGIBBS: Well, I call up the White House. The lady started giving me this lecture about how Love Canal residents have blown it out of proportion and lots of people die of cancer, and we should just—I’m like, "You know, lady, if I was a crazy, I’d kill these hostages." And I hung up the phone. I’m thinking, like, I am crazy.

REPORTER: Homeowners association president Lois Gibbs spoke with Congressman John LaFalce in Washington to try to get some answers. LaFalce is set to meet with President Carter at this hour at a dinner meeting at the White House. We should have more information...

LOISGIBBS: I went out on the front porch and said, "OK, guys, the president hears us. He’s going to hear from our congressman. I think we should let them go, and I think we should let them go with a very strong warning."

I have told the White House—and this is upon your approval—that we will allow the two EPA representatives to leave, but if we do not have a disaster declaration Wednesday by noon, then what they have seen here today is just a Sesame Street picnic in comparison.

ASHLEYJUDD: Two days later, Lois called the White House. Amazingly enough, her ultimatum worked.

LOISGIBBS: An emergency to permit the federal government and the state of New York to undertake...

And then, all of a sudden, she said, "And we will grant temporary relocation." I’m like, "And we will grant temporary relocation"—all of a sudden it was just like even the birds, I swear, weren’t singing—"until we can get permanent relocation money allocated, but permanent relocation is the goal."

DEBBIECERILLO: Here’s to the homeowners and all their hard work, huh?

ASHLEYJUDD: At last, President Carter came to Love Canal to sign the agreement buying out the homeowners.

PRESIDENTJIMMYCARTER: The whole question of a disposal of hazardous waste, especially toxic chemicals, is going to be one of the great environmental challenges of the 1980s. There must never be in our country another Love Canal. Thank you very much.

AMYGOODMAN: Yes, that was President Jimmy Carter and, throughout the excerpt, Lois Gibbs and others who led the struggle to take on Hooker Chemical in Love Canal, a community in Niagara Falls, New York. The story is told in A Fierce Green Fire, a film that tells the history of the environmental movement through these different struggles. In this Earth Day special, when we come back, we’ll look at Greenpeace and its battle to save the whales, as well as Chico Mendes and the rubber tappers of Brazil fighting to save the Amazon. Stay with us.

[break]

AMYGOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. Yes, today is Earth Day, and we’re looking at key moments in the history of the environmental movement as told in the new film A Fierce Green Fire, directed by Mark Kitchell. It’s airing tonight on PBSAmerican Masters. As we turn now to another extended excerpt about a ragtag group of ecologists who helped launch the group Greenpeace—their first campaign, a fight to save the whales. In this excerpt, we bring you Greenpeace co-founders Rex Weyler, Paul Watson and Bob Hunter. It’s narrated by Van Jones, President Obama’s former green jobs czar.

VANJONES: In 1975, Greenpeace set off to hunt the whalers. After two months at sea, they came upon the Russian whaling fleet.

REXWEYLER: There’s five over there. There’s on by the Vostok, and there’s three over here. There’s nine chasers altogether.

We’re coming upon a floating slaughterhouse. There’s blood in the water. There’s huge slabs of blubber being hauled up on these big factory ships. Blood is just pouring out of this pipe. And the stench alone made us all want to throw up.

PAULWATSON: Suddenly, Bob and I were in a small boat in front of a Soviet harpoon vessel that was bearing down on us. In front of us is eight magnificent sperm whales that were fleeing for their life. And every time the harpooner tried to get a shot, I was at the helm so I would maneuver the boat to try and block the harpoon.

REXWEYLER: Here’s the whales. Here’s us in our Zodiacs. And here’s the Russian ship. We are right between the Soviet ship and the whales. And the harpooner’s not shooting, but eventually somebody from the bridge walks down the catwalk and talks to the harpooner, and the harpooner nods, and the guy goes back. And Bob looks in his eyes, and he knows: This guy’s going to shoot this harpoon.

PAULWATSON: The he looked at us and smiled and brought his finger across his neck. And that’s when I realized Gandhi wasn’t going to pull through for us that day.

REXWEYLER: And at that very moment, they fire the harpoon.

PAULWATSON: This harpoon flew over our head and slammed into the backside of one of the whales. And she screamed. It was a very human-like screen, like a woman. And it took us completely off guard.

REXWEYLER: The whalers purposefully shoot at the female first, because they know that the bull whales will attack them. And then, when the bull whales come to attack them, which is exactly what happened...

PAULWATSON: He was waiting for them and very nonchalantly pulled the trigger and sent a second harpoon into the head of the whale. And he screamed and fell back. And now the water’s full of blood everywhere from the two dying whales. And as this whale lay and, you know, rolled in agony on the surface of the ocean, I caught his eye, and he looked straight at me.

REXWEYLER: And we’re looking into the eye of this huge sperm whale. And I have to tell you, it—it’s sort of beyond emotional. You know, when you—there are certain moments that are so emotional, you’re just in brand new territory.

PAULWATSON: Why were the Russians killing these whales? You know, they didn’t eat sperm whale meat, but they did use the spermaceti oil to make high-heat-resistant lubricating oil for machinery. And one of the pieces of machinery that they used it in is the manufacture of intercontinental ballistic missiles. And I said, "Here we are destroying this incredibly beautiful, intelligent, socially complex creature for the purpose of making a weapon meant for the mass destruction of humanity." And that’s when I—it came to me with a—you know, like a flash, that we’re insane. We’re just totally insane. And from that moment on, I decided that I work for whales, I work for seals, I work for sea turtles and fish and seabirds. I don’t work for people.

REXWEYLER: The story just exploded. And I think it was because people were seen, for the first time, not just standing up for the dispossessed humans, standing up for the dispossessed everything else in the world, every other species in the world that has been dispossessed by the industrial civilization of humankind.

VANJONES: Greenpeace’s new style of media-oriented activism launched them into the wildest ride of any environmental group.

REXWEYLER: We were out there trying to make the whales famous, but in the process we made ourselves famous. We were now able to talk about ecology, and we were able to raise money. Now we were able to do a seal campaign and a toxic dumping campaign. Offices were springing up all over the world calling themselves Greenpeace.

VANJONES: Their critics claimed that they were better at dramatizing issues than effecting change. But Greenpeace saw the media as the best means of changing consciousness. They called it dropping mind bombs.

BOBHUNTER: My idea was that if you took an image and you passed it through the media into the mass mind, you could essentially blow the mass mind with new images that would create whole new ways of looking at the world. And the image of small whales up against giant whaling machines was a mind bomb.

VANJONES: In 1976, Greenpeace dreamed up their next campaign: to save baby harp seals in Newfoundland.

REXWEYLER: We used the same tactics that we used with the whaling campaigns: We actually got out on the ice, blockaded the sealing ships.

BOBHUNTER: We’re blocking the boat.

PAULWATSON: He’s backed out three times and came forward already, trying to bluff us off.

BOBHUNTER: No, he might just be lining up for a big one soon.

VANJONES: The first year, they ran into furious opposition, especially over Paul’s plan to spray dye on the seal pups, rendering the pelts worthless.

PAULWATSON: That’s, I think, where I had a first falling out with Bob, really, because they compromised with the Newfoundlanders, you know, and said, "Well, we’re not going to dye the seals if you don’t do this." And I got real—you know, they didn’t consult with me on it, so I was quite angry on it. I don’t believe in compromising.

VANJONES: Paul was bitter. He came back the next year determined to stop the slaughter.

PAULWATSON: On the second seal campaign in '77, you know, I pulled a sealing club out of a sealer's hand, threw it in the water. I handcuffed myself to the pile of pelts to try and shut down their operations. They pulled the pelts into the water and pulled me through the water and up the side of the boat and dangled me from the air, and then they dropped me back in the water. And then they brought me up on the deck, and then they pulled me along the deck as these sealers were spitting and kicking and punching. Captain came in and started screaming at me about how, you know, it was people like me that ended whaling and, you know, "Now you’re trying to take sealing away from us."

VANJONES: Soon after the second seal campaign, Paul Watson was thrown out of Greenpeace for breaching their ethic of nonviolence. He had gone too far. Paul vowed to pursue the whalers without compromise. He set up his own group, the Sea Shepherd Society, and got himself a ship. The first thing he did was hunt down the Sierra, an illegal pirate whaler. Off the coast of Portugal, he found her.

PAULWATSON: I hit the Sierra at the bow to get its attention and to destroy the harpoon, then did a 360-degree turn around its stern and slammed into its side at 15 knots and split it open to the water line. That ship had killed 25,000 whales. What we are able to do in one year was to shut down every single pirate whaling vessel in the Atlantic. At the end of that one-year period, three of them were on the bottom, two of them were going to be sunk by the South African navy, and one of them had been sold.

PAULWATSON: In 1986, when we sank half of Iceland’s whaling fleet, John Frizell from Greenpeace came up to me. He said, "Just want to let you know that what you did in Iceland was despicable, reprehensible, criminal and unforgivable." And I said, "So?" And he said, "Well, you should know what people in this movement think about you." I says, "I don’t give a damn, John. I didn’t sink those whaling vessels for you or anybody in the movement. We sank those whaling vessels for the whales. Find me one whale that disagreed with what we did, and we’ll reconsider. But until then, I couldn’t give a damn what you people think."

VANJONES: It took everyone working together to ban whaling. For 10 years, radicals and mainstream, governments and NGOs campaigned to turn the International Whaling Commission from hunting to saving whales.

BOY: Why should we kill them if they’re just—it’s just like killing us?

INTERNATIONALWHALINGCOMMISSIONDELEGATE: What we are proposing is a moratorium.

VANJONES: A moratorium finally passed in 1982. And in time, it became a permanent ban on whaling, one of environmentalism’s biggest successes.

AMYGOODMAN: That was Van Jones narrating an excerpt of the film A Fierce Green Fire, which tells the history of the environmental movement for more than the past half-century and airs tonight on PBSAmerican Masters. We’re joined by its director, Mark Kitchell. Mark, that story, the Greenpeace chapter, if you will, is one of five in this film, which you call A Fierce Green Fire. Why?

MARKKITCHELL: Oh, there’s a famous story. It happened about a century ago in—a young ranger named Aldo Leopold, whose job was to kill predators, he shot a wolf. And he went down the hill to see a fierce green fire in her eyes as she was dying. And that was his awakening. And he wrote a famous essay about it called "Thinking Like a Mountain." But for us, we think of a fierce green fire as the movement, the environmental movement, and that’s the way we use it in the film. And that’s what we were really trying to do in this film that makes it different from other environmental films that are more issue-driven. We were really looking to tell stories of the movement, and we thought it would be a more engaging and impassioned approach to what are very difficult subjects. You know, usually, environmental films, no matter how good they are, are an eco-bummer. It’s always about a problem and a crisis, and ends with a plea for help. In this, we thought people could really identify with people like Lois Gibbs and Paul Watson and really get the passion. And these people succeeded against enormous odds, and that should give us some kind of hope that we can deal with such overwhelming problems like climate change and the sixth great extinction and trying to create a sustainable revolution to save human society.

AMYGOODMAN: We’re going to break and then come back to another of the chapters of this film about the remarkable rubber tapper Chico Mendes and his fight in the Brazilian rainforest to save the Amazon. Mark Kitchell is the director of A Fierce Green Fire. We’ll be back in a moment.

[break]

AMYGOODMAN: Yes, today is Earth Day, and we’re looking at the history of the environmental movement as told in a new film by Mark Kitchell that airs tonight across the country on PBS. It’s called A Fierce Green Fire. This final extended excerpt looks at a turning point in the fight to save the Amazon rainforest. It is a campaign led by Chico Mendes and the rubber tappers who are fighting to save their rubber trees from loggers. Chico Mendes wins, but is assassinated. The clip is narrated by the Chilean novelist Isabel Allende. It includes comments from Barbara Bramble of the National Wildlife Federation; José Lutzenberger, a Brazilian environmentalist; and Senator Robert Kasten. But first, Chico Mendes himself.

ADRIANCOWELL: [translated] Have you always been a seringueiro?

CHICOMENDES: [translated] Always. My father was a seringueiro. I started at nine years old, and for 20 years I was a full-time seringueiro. It was only in 1975, when the ranchers arrived, that I joined the union and cut less rubber.

ISABELALLENDE: The rubber tappers, known as seringueiros, squatted off the old seringals, or plantations, produced rubber and subsisted off the land. They were protected by being in the remote western Amazon, where roads had not penetrated. But as ranchers arrived and began clearing the land to claim it for tax breaks, Chico Mendes organized the rubber tappers to defend their territory.

CHICOMENDES: [translated] The ranchers’ aim was to take all this land. But we won’t let them have it. We’ll fight to the end. We won’t allow our forests to be destroyed.

ISABELALLENDE: The rubber tappers organized empates, or standoffs, nonviolent protests in the tradition of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, where they surrounded the trees and tried to explain what a disaster cutting down the forest was for everyone.

RAIMUNDO DE BARROS: [translated] Of course not. You’re a worker like us. The ranchers’ aim is to get everything. Once they destroy this natural wealth, which belongs to seringueiros, as well as you and all workers, it’s wonderful for them, because everywhere will be fenced and full of cattle. Then how will we live?

BARBARABRAMBLE: They actually were able to stop the forest cutting by standing in front of the trees. It’s a real heroic story. And it happened often enough that it actually impeded an entire cattle-ranching operation so much that they gave up.

CHICOMENDES: [translated] There are other landowners. But for the first time, we’ve won a victory against the Bordon group, the most powerful of the region. We’ve succeeded in defending most of a seringueiro’s territory.

ISABELALLENDE: American environmentalists helped bring Chico Mendes to the United States to campaign against the World Bank, whose loans led to destructive development.

JOSÉ LUTZENBERGER: The World Bank wants us to believe that they are helping the people in those areas. Now, this is a big lie and an infamous lie. The opposite is true: The people living in the forests, they have an interest in their preservation.

PROTESTERS: Save the rainforest! Save the rainforest! Save the rainforest! Save the rainforest!

CHICOMENDES: [translated] I hope that the governments which give money to the IDB, the people of the U.S., England, Japan, Europe, who contribute their taxes to finance the IDB, will listen to the seringueiros’ complaints.

SEN. ROBERTKASTEN: Our subcommittee is going to continue to put pressure on the IDB to withhold funds, to cut off all funds, possibly, if they are not more cooperative.

ELECTIONEERINGCAR IN RIOBRANCO: [translated] Chico Mendes, in defense of the Amazon forest, against the devastation of the jungle and expulsion of its people, for the creation of extractive reserves.

ISABELALLENDE: Chico was coming to understand that saving their way of life meant saving the Amazon. He began to build alliances with other rubber tappers and indigenous groups.

BARBARABRAMBLE: Several leaders and Chico decided to hold a meeting to try to form a national council of rubber tappers. What they all came to the conclusion of was that they needed to have rights to use the land, that one of the things that was keeping them from being able to effectively defend the forest against the chainsaw loggers and the cattle ranchers was not having an actual right to this land. They were seen as squatters.

ADRIANCOWELL: The idea was raised that there should be rubber tapper reserves, like Indian reserves. The people wouldn’t own the land, but it would be theirs for as long as they wanted to work it. It was an idea of the people who actually lived in the forest. That was a huge breakthrough in concept. This is a great movement within Amazonia, and that’s what Chico started.

ISABELALLENDE: The rubber tappers decided to establish the first reserve at Cachoeira, the old rubber plantation where Chico was born and lived with family and friends. However, the land had been bought by a rancher named Darli Alves, so the seringueros went to court to claim their squatter rights. It turned into a showdown.

DARLIALVES: [translated] Xapuri ranchers have always had trouble with seringueiros blocking their deforestation. Every time the ranchers tried to deforest, they were blocked. In Xapuri, it’s stalemate.

CHICOMENDES: [translated] We are in immediate danger. We’re seeing people killed. And there could be many more. The Parana ranch is terrorizing the whole population of Xapuri to strike at me, at Comercindo, at Haymundabajos, and the whole directorate of our workers’ movement.

Even though we want this to be peaceful, it may come to the point where the peaceful side won’t work, and we can’t be demoralized. We will go to the confrontation knowing someone may lose his life. Will you be with me?

ISABELALLENDE: The rubber tappers won. Cachoeira was declared the first extractive reserve in the world. It was an important victory to the whole of the Amazon. But the rancher Darli Alves had vowed to kill Chico Mendes.

FRIARLUISCIPPI: [translated] This has not been a bloodless journey. Some have already fallen defending extractive reserves. No one likes to die. But if it has to happen, then it should be to create more life. Christ was crucified. He gave his last drop of blood. But since that day, millions of communities have been born that believe and fight for brotherhood.

RUBBERTAPPERS: [translated] I promise, before the blood of our companion Chico Mendes, to continue his work, to show our enemies that they will never succeed in silencing the voice of the seringueiros. Chico Mendes, wherever you are, don’t grieve that they have silenced your voice. Your ideas exist among us.

BARBARABRAMBLE: There were things that came together after his death that probably couldn’t have come together if he was still alive, because they’d still be fighting over whether the extractive reserves should be established or not. After he was killed, there was no question. So now it’s quite clear that who saves forests are the people in the forest.

ISABELALLENDE: Chico Mendes’ work proved to be the turning point in the battle to save the Amazon. The Brazilian government recognized the rights of the forest peoples and established an array of parks and protected areas. Fifty-eight million acres were set aside in extractive reserves. Forty percent of the Brazilian Amazon was formally protected. However, the fate of the forest is still in doubt. Now it is not just cattle ranchers, but soy farming on an industrial scale and illegal logging. Due to the partial deforestation and the climate changes it has brought, the Amazon is drying out.

AMYGOODMAN: That excerpt narrated by the Chilean novelist Isabel Allende. It is from A Fierce Green Fire, a film that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and will air tonight on PBS. Yes, today is Earth Day. The film looks at the environmental movement over more than the last half-century, and it’s directed by Mark Kitchell, who we end with today. Mark, talk about your choices. These chapters in the film—on Greenpeace, on the rubber tappers and Chico Mendes, on Love Canal—talk about the final chapter and then how you chose these as emblematic of the environmental movement.

MARKKITCHELL: Well, the final act is climate change, the mother of all environmental issues, so big that it overwhelms everything else. And we tell that 25-year struggle to deal with it, the largest problem that the world’s ever faced. It’s largely a tale of frustration. Bill McKibben talks about the inability of the movement to deal with the issue for most of the ’90s. We go on from Copenhagen and sort of explore bottom-up movements versus top-down political failure, and really try and make the point that we need the bottom-up, the grassroots, pressure to force change from the top.

And Paul Hawken, with his brilliant ideas from Blessed Unrest, talks about how there’s probably two million groups worldwide working on these issues of environmental justice and the environment and indigenous rights and how they’re all connected. And he uses a metaphor of the movement being humanity’s immune response system. And I just think that’s a brilliant way to characterize a movement. It’s sort of a movement like we’ve never seen before in this world.

And it’s headed for bigger things. And, you know, we wanted to do an act six. We wanted to take on the future, and we tried various endings, and we could never fit it in. We had to get the film over. And so we just decided that we’ve got to do A Fierce Green Future, another film, and really take on that sustainable revolution, if you will.

I think ultimately this is about civilizational transformation. It’s going to be as big a change as the Industrial Revolution. And the task before us is to create a society that’s sort of moving from our industrial basis to a world in which we’re in sustainable balance with the natural world. I think that’s the only way we can survive. And I think this is just the first 50 years of it.

AMYGOODMAN: Mark Kitchell, I want to thank you for being with us, director of A Fierce Green Fire, which airs on PBSAmerican Masters tonight at 9:00 p.m. Eastern, tonight, on this day, Earth Day. You can visit our website for a link to local listings. Today is Earth Day. And you can tell us how you’re involved, if you are, with the environmental movement, who inspires you. Go to our Facebook page, and on Twitter, you can use the hashtag #discussDN.

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Tue, 22 Apr 2014 00:00:00 -0400VIDEO: Fast-Food Workers Charge McDonald's with Wage Thefthttp://www.democracynow.org/blog/2014/3/19/video_fast_food_workers_charge_mcdonalds
tag:democracynow.org,2014-03-19:blog/dc229a Democracy Now! was there when a group of fast-food workers rallied in front of a New York City McDonald&#8217;s Tuesday in support of lawsuits accusing the company of wage theft. Employees have filed suit in three states, claiming McDonald&#8217;s and its franchises have stolen their wages through a range of illegal practices. Workers&#8217; accusations include being forced to work while off the clock, having hours deleted from their time cards and being denied meal and rest breaks. McDonald&#8217;s worker Franklin La Paz said he&#8217;s been consistently overworked and underpaid. New York City Public Advocate Letitia James told the protesters she will formally propose a measure to establish a hotline for workers to report wage theft. McDonald has responded with a statement that they will investigate the claims.
PROTESTERS : We came! We saw! What you did is against the law!
NAQUASIA LEGRAND : We are here today to stand with McDonald&#8217;s workers to stop wage theft, because wage theft is not OK. It is a crime.
FRANKLIN LA PAZ : My name is Franklin. I am 25 years old and work just over 30 hours a week at McDonald&#8217;s. I work in McDonald&#8217;s to make ends meet, but I&#8217;ve also been a victim of wage theft, and I&#8217;m here today because it has to stop. Like Jennifer, I&#8217;ve never been paid the state-mandated uniform maintenance fee, but for months now I&#8217;ve also been forced to work off the clock and after my shift ends at midnight, two nights a week for five to 10 minutes, sometimes 10 to 20 minutes off the clock. It means doing clean-up and other basic job duties. It may not sound like a lot, but when you&#8217;re living on the edge like me, every penny counts.
ALVIN MAGOR : I work at 1040, 1040 Bedford and Lafayette in Brooklyn. It&#8217;s KFC . And actually, we [inaudible] about 10 workers. And I&#8217;ve been working 50, 60 hours, and I&#8217;m only getting—I&#8217;m not getting overtime. I&#8217;m 48 years old with four kids. So, at $8.25, $8.25 minimum wage, $8, it cannot really compensate for the costs of living in New York City.
PROTESTERS : Everywhere we go, the people want to know who we are, so we tell them, &quot;We are the workers, the fast-food workers, fighting for justice and fair wages.&quot;
NAQUASIA LEGRAND : We all know Ronald McDonald&#8217;s make billions and billions of dollars each and every year. There&#8217;s no reason why they should take the hard-working money that we work for out of our paycheck. I mean, you&#8217;re giving us minimum wage, and you&#8217;re taking the money back from us? That don&#8217;t make no sense. And these are working families. We&#8217;re talking about single mothers, single fathers, students, elderly people. I mean, it doesn&#8217;t matter. We&#8217;re all working toward something. And this is why it&#8217;s shame on you!
PROTESTERS : Shame on you! Shame on you!
RABBI MICHAEL FEINBERG : The faith community is paying attention to this issue. It&#8217;s a righteous demand. It&#8217;s right that workers are paid their fair due, are given a living wage and shown the respect and dignity on the job that they deserve.
LETITIA JAMES : McDonald&#8217;s made a $5.5 billion profit in 2012, while workers are barely making ends meet. These companies should pay their hard-working employees enough to cover the necessities and support their families. It is unacceptable, and it&#8217;s now time that government steps in and support these workers and protects their salaries and supports their right to organize.
PROTESTERS : No justice, no peace! No justice, no peace! Democracy Now! was there when a group of fast-food workers rallied in front of a New York City McDonald’s Tuesday in support of lawsuits accusing the company of wage theft. Employees have filed suit in three states, claiming McDonald’s and its franchises have stolen their wages through a range of illegal practices. Workers’ accusations include being forced to work while off the clock, having hours deleted from their time cards and being denied meal and rest breaks. McDonald’s worker Franklin La Paz said he’s been consistently overworked and underpaid. New York City Public Advocate Letitia James told the protesters she will formally propose a measure to establish a hotline for workers to report wage theft. McDonald has responded with a statement that they will investigate the claims.

PROTESTERS: We came! We saw! What you did is against the law!

NAQUASIALEGRAND: We are here today to stand with McDonald’s workers to stop wage theft, because wage theft is not OK. It is a crime.

FRANKLIN LA PAZ: My name is Franklin. I am 25 years old and work just over 30 hours a week at McDonald’s. I work in McDonald’s to make ends meet, but I’ve also been a victim of wage theft, and I’m here today because it has to stop. Like Jennifer, I’ve never been paid the state-mandated uniform maintenance fee, but for months now I’ve also been forced to work off the clock and after my shift ends at midnight, two nights a week for five to 10 minutes, sometimes 10 to 20 minutes off the clock. It means doing clean-up and other basic job duties. It may not sound like a lot, but when you’re living on the edge like me, every penny counts.

ALVINMAGOR: I work at 1040, 1040 Bedford and Lafayette in Brooklyn. It’s KFC. And actually, we [inaudible] about 10 workers. And I’ve been working 50, 60 hours, and I’m only getting—I’m not getting overtime. I’m 48 years old with four kids. So, at $8.25, $8.25 minimum wage, $8, it cannot really compensate for the costs of living in New York City.

PROTESTERS: Everywhere we go, the people want to know who we are, so we tell them, "We are the workers, the fast-food workers, fighting for justice and fair wages."

NAQUASIALEGRAND: We all know Ronald McDonald’s make billions and billions of dollars each and every year. There’s no reason why they should take the hard-working money that we work for out of our paycheck. I mean, you’re giving us minimum wage, and you’re taking the money back from us? That don’t make no sense. And these are working families. We’re talking about single mothers, single fathers, students, elderly people. I mean, it doesn’t matter. We’re all working toward something. And this is why it’s shame on you!

PROTESTERS: Shame on you! Shame on you!

RABBIMICHAELFEINBERG: The faith community is paying attention to this issue. It’s a righteous demand. It’s right that workers are paid their fair due, are given a living wage and shown the respect and dignity on the job that they deserve.

LETITIAJAMES: McDonald’s made a $5.5 billion profit in 2012, while workers are barely making ends meet. These companies should pay their hard-working employees enough to cover the necessities and support their families. It is unacceptable, and it’s now time that government steps in and support these workers and protects their salaries and supports their right to organize.

PROTESTERS: No justice, no peace! No justice, no peace!

]]>
Wed, 19 Mar 2014 19:23:00 -0400VIDEO: Fast-Food Workers Charge McDonald's with Wage Theft Democracy Now! was there when a group of fast-food workers rallied in front of a New York City McDonald&#8217;s Tuesday in support of lawsuits accusing the company of wage theft. Employees have filed suit in three states, claiming McDonald&#8217;s and its franchises have stolen their wages through a range of illegal practices. Workers&#8217; accusations include being forced to work while off the clock, having hours deleted from their time cards and being denied meal and rest breaks. McDonald&#8217;s worker Franklin La Paz said he&#8217;s been consistently overworked and underpaid. New York City Public Advocate Letitia James told the protesters she will formally propose a measure to establish a hotline for workers to report wage theft. McDonald has responded with a statement that they will investigate the claims.
PROTESTERS : We came! We saw! What you did is against the law!
NAQUASIA LEGRAND : We are here today to stand with McDonald&#8217;s workers to stop wage theft, because wage theft is not OK. It is a crime.
FRANKLIN LA PAZ : My name is Franklin. I am 25 years old and work just over 30 hours a week at McDonald&#8217;s. I work in McDonald&#8217;s to make ends meet, but I&#8217;ve also been a victim of wage theft, and I&#8217;m here today because it has to stop. Like Jennifer, I&#8217;ve never been paid the state-mandated uniform maintenance fee, but for months now I&#8217;ve also been forced to work off the clock and after my shift ends at midnight, two nights a week for five to 10 minutes, sometimes 10 to 20 minutes off the clock. It means doing clean-up and other basic job duties. It may not sound like a lot, but when you&#8217;re living on the edge like me, every penny counts.
ALVIN MAGOR : I work at 1040, 1040 Bedford and Lafayette in Brooklyn. It&#8217;s KFC . And actually, we [inaudible] about 10 workers. And I&#8217;ve been working 50, 60 hours, and I&#8217;m only getting—I&#8217;m not getting overtime. I&#8217;m 48 years old with four kids. So, at $8.25, $8.25 minimum wage, $8, it cannot really compensate for the costs of living in New York City.
PROTESTERS : Everywhere we go, the people want to know who we are, so we tell them, &quot;We are the workers, the fast-food workers, fighting for justice and fair wages.&quot;
NAQUASIA LEGRAND : We all know Ronald McDonald&#8217;s make billions and billions of dollars each and every year. There&#8217;s no reason why they should take the hard-working money that we work for out of our paycheck. I mean, you&#8217;re giving us minimum wage, and you&#8217;re taking the money back from us? That don&#8217;t make no sense. And these are working families. We&#8217;re talking about single mothers, single fathers, students, elderly people. I mean, it doesn&#8217;t matter. We&#8217;re all working toward something. And this is why it&#8217;s shame on you!
PROTESTERS : Shame on you! Shame on you!
RABBI MICHAEL FEINBERG : The faith community is paying attention to this issue. It&#8217;s a righteous demand. It&#8217;s right that workers are paid their fair due, are given a living wage and shown the respect and dignity on the job that they deserve.
LETITIA JAMES : McDonald&#8217;s made a $5.5 billion profit in 2012, while workers are barely making ends meet. These companies should pay their hard-working employees enough to cover the necessities and support their families. It is unacceptable, and it&#8217;s now time that government steps in and support these workers and protects their salaries and supports their right to organize.
PROTESTERS : No justice, no peace! No justice, no peace! nonadulttv-gDemocracy Now!NewsVIDEO: Fast-Food Workers Charge McDonald's with Wage Theft Democracy Now! was there when a group of fast-food workers rallied in front of a New York City McDonald&#8217;s Tuesday in support of lawsuits accusing the company of wage theft. Employees have filed suit in three states, claiming McDonald&#8217;s and its franchises have stolen their wages through a range of illegal practices. Workers&#8217; accusations include being forced to work while off the clock, having hours deleted from their time cards and being denied meal and rest breaks. McDonald&#8217;s worker Franklin La Paz said he&#8217;s been consistently overworked and underpaid. New York City Public Advocate Letitia James told the protesters she will formally propose a measure to establish a hotline for workers to report wage theft. McDonald has responded with a statement that they will investigate the claims.
PROTESTERS : We came! We saw! What you did is against the law!
NAQUASIA LEGRAND : We are here today to stand with McDonald&#8217;s workers to stop wage theft, because wage theft is not OK. It is a crime.
FRANKLIN LA PAZ : My name is Franklin. I am 25 years old and work just over 30 hours a week at McDonald&#8217;s. I work in McDonald&#8217;s to make ends meet, but I&#8217;ve also been a victim of wage theft, and I&#8217;m here today because it has to stop. Like Jennifer, I&#8217;ve never been paid the state-mandated uniform maintenance fee, but for months now I&#8217;ve also been forced to work off the clock and after my shift ends at midnight, two nights a week for five to 10 minutes, sometimes 10 to 20 minutes off the clock. It means doing clean-up and other basic job duties. It may not sound like a lot, but when you&#8217;re living on the edge like me, every penny counts.
ALVIN MAGOR : I work at 1040, 1040 Bedford and Lafayette in Brooklyn. It&#8217;s KFC . And actually, we [inaudible] about 10 workers. And I&#8217;ve been working 50, 60 hours, and I&#8217;m only getting—I&#8217;m not getting overtime. I&#8217;m 48 years old with four kids. So, at $8.25, $8.25 minimum wage, $8, it cannot really compensate for the costs of living in New York City.
PROTESTERS : Everywhere we go, the people want to know who we are, so we tell them, &quot;We are the workers, the fast-food workers, fighting for justice and fair wages.&quot;
NAQUASIA LEGRAND : We all know Ronald McDonald&#8217;s make billions and billions of dollars each and every year. There&#8217;s no reason why they should take the hard-working money that we work for out of our paycheck. I mean, you&#8217;re giving us minimum wage, and you&#8217;re taking the money back from us? That don&#8217;t make no sense. And these are working families. We&#8217;re talking about single mothers, single fathers, students, elderly people. I mean, it doesn&#8217;t matter. We&#8217;re all working toward something. And this is why it&#8217;s shame on you!
PROTESTERS : Shame on you! Shame on you!
RABBI MICHAEL FEINBERG : The faith community is paying attention to this issue. It&#8217;s a righteous demand. It&#8217;s right that workers are paid their fair due, are given a living wage and shown the respect and dignity on the job that they deserve.
LETITIA JAMES : McDonald&#8217;s made a $5.5 billion profit in 2012, while workers are barely making ends meet. These companies should pay their hard-working employees enough to cover the necessities and support their families. It is unacceptable, and it&#8217;s now time that government steps in and support these workers and protects their salaries and supports their right to organize.
PROTESTERS : No justice, no peace! No justice, no peace! nonadulttv-gDemocracy Now!NewsExclusive: Inside the Army Spy Ring & Attempted Entrapment of Peace Activists, Iraq Vets, Anarchistshttp://www.democracynow.org/2014/2/25/exclusive_inside_the_army_spy_ring
tag:democracynow.org,2014-02-25:en/story/1ce70e AMY GOODMAN : More details have come to light showing the U.S. military infiltrated and spied on a community of antiwar activists in the state of Washington and beyond. Democracy Now! first broke the story in 2009 that an active member of Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance was actually an informant for the U.S. military. At the time, Port Militarization Resistance was staging nonviolent actions to stop military shipments bound for Iraq and Afghanistan. The man everyone knew as &quot;John Jacob&quot; was in fact John Towery, a member of the Force Protection Service at Fort Lewis. He also spied on the Industrial Workers of the World and Iraq Veterans Against the War. The antiwar activist Brendan Maslauskas Dunn helped expose John Towery&#8217;s true identity as a military spy. In 2009, Dunn spoke on Democracy Now!
BRENDAN MASLAUSKAS DUNN : After it was confirmed that he was in fact John Towery, I knew he wouldn&#8217;t call me, so I called him up the day after. This was this past Thursday. And I called him up; I said, &quot;John, you know, what&#8217;s the deal? Is this true?&quot; And he told me; he said, &quot;Yes, it is true, but there&#8217;s a lot more to this story than what was publicized.&quot; So he wanted to meet with me and another anarchist in person to further discuss what happened and what his role was.
So, when I met him, he admitted to several things. He admitted that, yes, he did in fact spy on us. He did in fact infiltrate us. He admitted that he did pass on information to an intelligence network, which, as you mentioned earlier, was composed of dozens of law enforcement agencies, ranging from municipal to county to state to regional, and several federal agencies, including Immigration Customs Enforcement, Joint Terrorism Task Force, FBI , Homeland Security, the Army in Fort Lewis.
So he admitted to other things, too. He admitted that the police had placed a camera, surveillance camera, across the street from a community center in Tacoma that anarchists ran called the Pitch Pipe Infoshop. He admitted that there were police that did put a camera up there to spy on anarchists, on activists going there.
AMY GOODMAN : That was Brendan Maslauskas Dunn speaking in 2009 on Democracy Now! He&#8217;s now a plaintiff in a lawsuit against John Towery, the military and other law enforcement agencies.
Since 2009, there have been numerous developments in the case. A newly made public email written by Towery reveals the Army informant was building a multi-agency spying apparatus. The email was sent by Towery using his military account. It was sent to the FBI as well as the police departments in Los Angeles, in Portland, Eugene, Everett and Spokane, Washington. He wrote, quote, &quot;I thought it would be a good idea to develop a leftist/anarchist mini-group for intel sharing and distro.&quot; Towery also cites &quot;zines and pamphlets,&quot; and a &quot;comprehensive web list&quot; as source material, but cautions the officials on file sharing becase, quote, &quot;it might tip off groups that we are studying their techniques, tactics and procedures,&quot; he wrote. The subject of the email was &quot;Anarchist Information.&quot;
Meanwhile, evidence has also emerged that the Army informant may have attempted to entrap at least one of the peace activists by attempting to persuade him to purchase guns and learn to shoot.
We&#8217;re joined now by two guests. Glenn Crespo is a community organizer in the Bay Area who used to live in Washington state, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the military and other agencies. He&#8217;s joining us from Berkeley. And with us in Seattle, Washington, longtime attorney Larry Hildes, who represents the activists in the case.
The Joint Base Lewis-McChord Public Affairs Office declined to join us on the program, saying, quote, &quot;Because this case is still in litigation we are unable to provide comment.&quot;
Let&#8217;s go first to Washington state, to Larry Hildes. Can you talk about the latest developments in this case, and what has just come out?
LARRY HILDES : Sure. Good morning, Amy. It&#8217;s interesting. What came out did not come out from this case. It came out from a Public Records Act request from a different client of ours who was arrested in an anti-police-brutality march and falsely charged with assaulting an officer, that the civil case is coming to trial in a couple weeks. He put in a Public Records Act request because he was active with PMR and was concerned that he had been targeted, and he was then subject to a number of citations and arrests.
And, yeah, the Army&#8217;s investigative reports claimed that, well, there may have been some rules broken, but Towery was doing this off the job in his off-hours, unpaid, for the sheriff—for the Pierce County Sheriff&#8217;s Office and the fusion center. Here he is at his desk, 10:00 in the morning, using his military ID, his military email address, and identifying himself by his military titles, writing the law enforcement agencies all over the country about forming this mini-group to target and research anarchists and leftists, and it&#8217;s coming out of what&#8217;s called the DT Conference that the State Patrol was hosting here in Washington, Domestic Terrorism Conference. They created a book for this conference based on information largely from Towery that included Brendan Dunn and one of our other plaintiffs, Jeff Berryhill, and two other activists with PMR , listed them as domestic terrorists and a violent threat because of their—basically, because they were targeted by Towery and because of their activism and their arrests for civil disobedience. So, he&#8217;s taking something he created, labeling these people as terrorists, going to a conference with this information, and saying, &quot;We should disseminate this and work on this more broadly.&quot;
It also puts the lie to Towery&#8217;s claim and his supervisor Tom Rudd&#8217;s claim that Towery was simply working to protect troop movements from—between Fort Lewis and the public ports of Stryker vehicles going to the occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. They&#8217;re not shipping out of L.A. They&#8217;re not shipping out of Portland or Eugene. And they&#8217;re not—none of these are agencies that are directly involved in protecting military shipments from Fort Lewis. So it&#8217;s clear there&#8217;s a much larger agenda here.
And we&#8217;ve seen that in some other ways. There are extensive notes that we&#8217;ve received of Towery&#8217;s spying on a conference of the Evergreen State College in Olympia about tactics for the protests at the DNC in Denver in &#39;08, Republican—Democratic National Convention, and the Republican National Convention in St. Paul in &#8217;08, and who was going to do what, the red, yellow and green zones, and specifically what was going to happen on the Monday of the convention. And it was the RNC Welcome Committee, which then got raided and became the RNC 8—claimed that they were planning acts of terrorism, which were in reality acts of nonviolent civil disobedience. So this goes way beyond Fort Lewis and PMR , and there&#39;s a full—there seems to be a much larger agenda, as we&#8217;ve seen in other places, of nonviolent activism equals terrorism equals anarchism equals justification for whatever spying or law enforcement action we want to take.
AMY GOODMAN : I want to—
LARRY HILDES : And obviously this is not—sorry, go ahead, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN : I want to read from your lawsuit. You write, quote, &quot;In addition to the Army, Coast Guard, and Olympia Police Department, the following agencies are known to have spied on, infiltrated, or otherwise monitored the activities of PMR and/or related or associated activists: Thurston County Sheriff&#8217;s Office, Grays Harbor Sheriff&#8217;s Office, Pierce County Sheriff&#8217;s Office, Tacoma Police Department, Lakewood Police Department, Ft. Lewis Police Department, 504th Military Police Division, Aberdeen Police Department, The Evergreen State College Police Department, the Lacey Police Department, the [Tumwater] Police Department, the Seattle Police Department, the King County Sheriff&#8217;s Office, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Federal Protective Service, other Divisions of the Department of Homeland Security, Naval Investigative Services, Air Force Intelligence (which has created a special PMR SDS taskforce at McGwire Air Force Base in New Jersey), The Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Seattle Joint Terrorism Taskforce, as well as the previously discussed civilian employees of the City of Olympia. This list is likely incomplete,&quot; you write. That is a very extensive list, Larry Hildes.
LARRY HILDES : It is. And it turns out it is incomplete. And those were all agencies that we had documents obtained from Public Records Act requests showing that they were directly involved. So now we&#8217;re finding out there&#8217;s more agencies. The Evergreen State College was giving regular reports to the State Patrol, to the Thurston County Sheriff&#8217;s Office and to Towery and Rudd about activities of SDS on campus at Evergreen. And there&#8217;s an extensive discussion about the conference about the DNC and RNC protests and that the chief of police is the source for the information. But, yeah, now we&#8217;ve got L.A. This gets bizarre. And we received 9,440 pages of sealed documents from the Army as a Christmas present on December 21st that—that I can&#8217;t even talk about, because they insisted that everything was privileged. It was supposed to be privileged as to private information and security information, but it&#8217;s everything, all kinds of emails. So, yeah, I mean, it starts out sounding very encompassing, and we&#8217;re finding out we were conservative about what agencies were involved.
AMY GOODMAN : I wanted to bring Glenn Crespo into this conversation, a Bay Area community organizer. You were the peace activist who John Towery, you say, attempted to persuade you to purchase guns, to learn to shoot. How did you meet him, and what happened when he tried to get you to do this?
GLENN CRESPO : Well, this kind of relationship spanned over a two-, maybe two-and-a-half-year period of time. I first met him at a weapons symposium demonstration in Tacoma, Washington, in downtown Tacoma. I didn&#8217;t introduce myself to him at that point, but I saw him there. He came out—he actually came out of the symposium, and this was a conference where Lockheed Martin and all these other weapons manufacturers and distributors were showing their wares. He came out of that, and it appeared to me as if other activists in Olympia had already become friends with them. He was very friendly with them, they were very friendly with him. That was the first time I saw him. That was in mid-2007. Not long after that, he organized a Tacoma PMR meeting, and I wasn&#8217;t really involved—
AMY GOODMAN : Port Militarization Resistance.
GLENN CRESPO : Yeah, exactly. And I wasn&#8217;t very involved in that, but I did get the mass email. So I figured, because I lived in Tacoma, I might as well go check it out. He was the first person there. I was the second person there. He introduced himself. I introduced myself. And he asked me about a poster that he had made regarding an upcoming demonstration, and he said he was going to bring it to the group and see if we could get consensus on whether or not it was OK if he put it up. And I told him that—I looked at the poster and said, you know, &quot;This is pretty general.&quot; There&#8217;s no particular reason I really think that he has to get consensus on whether or not he can put a poster up that&#8217;s kind of basically just time and place and description of the event. And that was the first time I met him.
He later on used that conversation as a way to boost our rapport between each other, when he said that he thought that that conversation was really profound to him, that he believed that it was interesting that I kind of wanted to—or suggested that he bypass some sort of consensus process regarding this poster, so that he can just do—you know, that he could do what he wants. You know, he could put the poster up if he wants to. That was very interesting. I realized that in retrospect, that that was a way that he tried to broaden or expand upon our friendship in the beginning.
AMY GOODMAN : And then, where did the guns come in?
GLENN CRESPO : Probably within the six to seven months after meeting him, so late—late 2007. He had started coming to events at the house I was living at in Tacoma. We were doing—we did a lending library. And we were doing a lot of organizing regarding the Tacoma Immigration and Customs detention center, so the ICE detention center. He would go to those meetings. He would come over for potlucks. So both public and private events, he kind of worked his way in as a friend.
He produced handgun to me in our kitchen, just between he and I. He carried it in his side pocket. He said he always carried a handgun on him. And he emptied it. He put the magazine out. He cleared the chamber, and he handed it to me. And he said he always carries one on him. And that, that was the first time he really talked about guns with me. And I was caught off guard, because at the time I was in my early twenties. I had never held a—I don&#8217;t even think I had seen a handgun, really, like that before. And that was kind of the beginning of him starting to talk more about guns. And he said—he had said that if we ever wanted to go shooting, being me and my friends, or myself in particular, that he would take us shooting, or, you know, he knows where all the gun shows are at, so we could go to gun shows if—you know, if we&#8217;re interested. And then, later on, these things did happen, when he prompted myself and others to go to the Puyallup Gun Show and purchase—purchase a rifle. And then, that went into going to shooting ranges that he was already a member of. He would drive us to all of these things, take us to these shooting ranges.
And this seemed fairly innocuous to me, in the beginning. I mean, Washington is a pretty gun-owner-friendly state. It didn&#8217;t—it didn&#8217;t really surprise me, because he wasn&#8217;t saying anything crazy or really implying anything crazy at that point. But about a year into that, there was a significant shift in his personality. Whereas in the beginning he was very optimistic and very—seemed very hopeful and kind of seemed lonely—I mean, he was, you know, in his early forties, early to mid-forties. He primarily surrounding himself with people who were in their early twenties. And he just came off as if he was kind of a sweet, harmless guy and was kind of lonely and wanted to hang out with people that he felt like he had something in common with, as far as his ideas went. But like I said, into a year into that relationship, he started to become a little bit more sinister and dark in his demeanor, in his—the things he would talk about.
And this continued to go into him giving myself and another friend a set of documents that were military strategy documents, and he said that he—he suggested that &quot;we,&quot; whatever that meant, use those documents in &quot;our actions.&quot; And these were documents on how to properly execute military operations. And then, following that, he showed people at my house, including myself, how to clear a building with a firearm. And these things were prompted by him. He would basically say, &quot;Hey, do you—you know, check this out. Look, I could explain this stuff.&quot; And he would just go into it, on how to, for example, in this case, clear a building with a firearm. So he had a mock—you know, he would hold a rifle up, or a make-believe rifle, and clear—stalk around the lower levels of our house and up the stairwell, all the way up the second stairwell into the attic, and the whole time talking about how he would—you know, how he was clearing corners and checking angles and all this stuff that nobody particularly had any interest in.
And around the same time, he had, you know, conversations with me about how he believed that anarchists were very similar to fascists, in a—almost in a positive light, where he was saying that they both don&#8217;t care about the law and don&#8217;t use the law to get what they need or what they want, and that he believed that the only way anarchism or anarchy would ever work, in his words, would be if five billion people died. So this is kind of in his—in the midst of his weird, sinister behavior that started to happen, that I thought that he was depressed. I thought that he was basically going through some sort of like maybe existential crisis, or maybe he was fed up with things. I wasn&#8217;t really sure. He always talked about him having issues at the house—at his home. He had implied that his wife was concerned that he was cheating on her, and that&#8217;s why we could never go to his house, because his wife didn&#8217;t like us, his other friends, or whatever.
He submitted an article in the same—like the last—you know, that last half of the time that I knew him as a friend. He submitted an article to a magazine that I was editor of in early 2009, that was written from the perspective of 9/11 hijackers. And I remember this very specifically, because he gave me a copy, a physical copy, when we were on our way to go get coffee. And I remember reading it, and probably about a quarter of the way through realizing I didn&#8217;t even feel comfortable touching it, like touching the physical document with my hands. It was the weirdest thing in the world, because it was kind of—it was basically implying—or seeming sympathetic with the 9/11 hijackers. And he wanted me to publish this in his—in the next issue of the magazine I was editor of. So I just—I actually—because he was being so forceful, I just didn&#8217;t do the magazine again. That first issue was the last issue. And once he submitted that paper, I didn&#8217;t publish it ever again.
AMY GOODMAN : Let me ask your lawyer, Larry Hildes, is this entrapment, I mean, when you&#8217;re talking about this whole progression that Glenn Crespo went through with the man he thought was named John Jacob, who in fact is John Towery, working at Fort Lewis? He&#8217;s military personnel.
LARRY HILDES : I think, absolutely, it was an attempted entrapment. He went step by step. He misjudged our folks. He thought our—he correctly saw that our folks were angry and upset about what was going on, but misjudged them. It feels like we could have ended up with a Cleveland Five or an 803 situation very easily, if he had had his way. Fortunately, our folks&#8217; reaction was: &quot;This is really weird and creepy. Get away from me.&quot; And it speaks to how little he understood the nature of the antiwar movement and how little he understood people&#8217;s actual commitment to nonviolent action, to not seeing the troops themselves as the enemies—
AMY GOODMAN : Larry—
LARRY HILDES : —but seeing the war—yeah, I&#8217;m—yeah, go ahead.
AMY GOODMAN : Larry Hildes, we don&#8217;t have much time, but I just want to ask about Posse Comitatus and the laws that separate the military—I mean, they&#8217;re not supposed to be marching through the streets of the United States.
LARRY HILDES : Yeah, right.
AMY GOODMAN : What about this issue of investigating? And how far and extensive is this infiltration campaign, where you put in people, they change their names, and they try to entrap or they change the nature of what these actions are?
LARRY HILDES : I think they crossed the line. They claim they&#8217;re allowed to do some level of investigative work to protect military activities, military shipments. But entrapping people—attempting to entrap people into conspiracies where they can get charged with major felonies they had no intention of committing, dealing with law enforcement agencies around the country to keep tabs on activists, following them to protests in Denver and St. Paul that have absolutely nothing to do with military shipments, they crossed the line into law enforcement, into civilian law enforcement.
And they did so quite knowingly and deliberately, and created this cover story that Towery was working for the fusion center, reporting to the sheriff&#8217;s office, not doing this during his work time, because they were well aware—in fact, he got paid overtime for attending the RNC , DNC conference at Evergreen, by the Army. So the Army was expressly paying him to monitor, disrupt and destroy these folks&#8217; activism and their lives. I mean, we had—at one point, Brendan Dunn had four cases at the same time in four counties, because they kept stopping him. Seven times he got arrested or cited; Jeff Berryhill several times; Glenn Crespo. People would get busted over and over and over. Towery was attending their personal parties, their birthday parties, their going-away parties, and taking these vicious notes and passing them on about how to undermine these folks, how to undermine their activities, how to destroy their lives. This is way into Posse Comitatus. This is way beyond any legitimate military role.
And it&#8217;s exactly why Posse Comitatus exists. The job of the military, as they see it, is to seek out the enemy and destroy them, neutralize them. When the enemy is nonviolent dissenters and the First Amendment becomes the enemy, as Chris Pyle, our expert, who was the investigator for the Church Committee, put it—the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment are an inconvenience to the Army; they ignore them; they&#8217;re not sworn to uphold them in the same way—it becomes a very dangerous situation. And yes, they are way over into illegal conduct. They&#8217;re into entrapment operations. They&#8217;re into trying to silence dissent against them, and apparently much larger. This case just keeps getting bigger as we go. And we&#8217;re set for trial, I should say, on June 2nd—
AMY GOODMAN : And we will continue to cover this.
LARRY HILDES : —at this point.
AMY GOODMAN : I want to thank you both for being with us. Larry Hildes, lead attorney representing the antiwar activists spied on by the military, civil rights attorney with the National Lawyers Guild, speaking to us from Seattle, Washington. And Glenn, thank you so much for being with us. Glenn Crespo is a plaintiff in the lawsuit, a community organizer in the Bay Area of California.
This is Democracy Now! , democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report . When we come back, spies in the movement. We&#8217;re going to go back some time to the civil rights movement. Stay with us. AMYGOODMAN: More details have come to light showing the U.S. military infiltrated and spied on a community of antiwar activists in the state of Washington and beyond. Democracy Now!first broke the story in 2009 that an active member of Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance was actually an informant for the U.S. military. At the time, Port Militarization Resistance was staging nonviolent actions to stop military shipments bound for Iraq and Afghanistan. The man everyone knew as "John Jacob" was in fact John Towery, a member of the Force Protection Service at Fort Lewis. He also spied on the Industrial Workers of the World and Iraq Veterans Against the War. The antiwar activist Brendan Maslauskas Dunn helped expose John Towery’s true identity as a military spy. In 2009, Dunn spoke on Democracy Now!

BRENDANMASLAUSKASDUNN: After it was confirmed that he was in fact John Towery, I knew he wouldn’t call me, so I called him up the day after. This was this past Thursday. And I called him up; I said, "John, you know, what’s the deal? Is this true?" And he told me; he said, "Yes, it is true, but there’s a lot more to this story than what was publicized." So he wanted to meet with me and another anarchist in person to further discuss what happened and what his role was.

So, when I met him, he admitted to several things. He admitted that, yes, he did in fact spy on us. He did in fact infiltrate us. He admitted that he did pass on information to an intelligence network, which, as you mentioned earlier, was composed of dozens of law enforcement agencies, ranging from municipal to county to state to regional, and several federal agencies, including Immigration Customs Enforcement, Joint Terrorism Task Force, FBI, Homeland Security, the Army in Fort Lewis.

So he admitted to other things, too. He admitted that the police had placed a camera, surveillance camera, across the street from a community center in Tacoma that anarchists ran called the Pitch Pipe Infoshop. He admitted that there were police that did put a camera up there to spy on anarchists, on activists going there.

AMYGOODMAN: That was Brendan Maslauskas Dunn speaking in 2009 on Democracy Now! He’s now a plaintiff in a lawsuit against John Towery, the military and other law enforcement agencies.

Since 2009, there have been numerous developments in the case. A newly made public email written by Towery reveals the Army informant was building a multi-agency spying apparatus. The email was sent by Towery using his military account. It was sent to the FBI as well as the police departments in Los Angeles, in Portland, Eugene, Everett and Spokane, Washington. He wrote, quote, "I thought it would be a good idea to develop a leftist/anarchist mini-group for intel sharing and distro." Towery also cites "zines and pamphlets," and a "comprehensive web list" as source material, but cautions the officials on file sharing becase, quote, "it might tip off groups that we are studying their techniques, tactics and procedures," he wrote. The subject of the email was "Anarchist Information."

Meanwhile, evidence has also emerged that the Army informant may have attempted to entrap at least one of the peace activists by attempting to persuade him to purchase guns and learn to shoot.

We’re joined now by two guests. Glenn Crespo is a community organizer in the Bay Area who used to live in Washington state, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the military and other agencies. He’s joining us from Berkeley. And with us in Seattle, Washington, longtime attorney Larry Hildes, who represents the activists in the case.

The Joint Base Lewis-McChord Public Affairs Office declined to join us on the program, saying, quote, "Because this case is still in litigation we are unable to provide comment."

Let’s go first to Washington state, to Larry Hildes. Can you talk about the latest developments in this case, and what has just come out?

LARRYHILDES: Sure. Good morning, Amy. It’s interesting. What came out did not come out from this case. It came out from a Public Records Act request from a different client of ours who was arrested in an anti-police-brutality march and falsely charged with assaulting an officer, that the civil case is coming to trial in a couple weeks. He put in a Public Records Act request because he was active with PMR and was concerned that he had been targeted, and he was then subject to a number of citations and arrests.

And, yeah, the Army’s investigative reports claimed that, well, there may have been some rules broken, but Towery was doing this off the job in his off-hours, unpaid, for the sheriff—for the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office and the fusion center. Here he is at his desk, 10:00 in the morning, using his military ID, his military email address, and identifying himself by his military titles, writing the law enforcement agencies all over the country about forming this mini-group to target and research anarchists and leftists, and it’s coming out of what’s called the DT Conference that the State Patrol was hosting here in Washington, Domestic Terrorism Conference. They created a book for this conference based on information largely from Towery that included Brendan Dunn and one of our other plaintiffs, Jeff Berryhill, and two other activists with PMR, listed them as domestic terrorists and a violent threat because of their—basically, because they were targeted by Towery and because of their activism and their arrests for civil disobedience. So, he’s taking something he created, labeling these people as terrorists, going to a conference with this information, and saying, "We should disseminate this and work on this more broadly."

It also puts the lie to Towery’s claim and his supervisor Tom Rudd’s claim that Towery was simply working to protect troop movements from—between Fort Lewis and the public ports of Stryker vehicles going to the occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. They’re not shipping out of L.A. They’re not shipping out of Portland or Eugene. And they’re not—none of these are agencies that are directly involved in protecting military shipments from Fort Lewis. So it’s clear there’s a much larger agenda here.

And we’ve seen that in some other ways. There are extensive notes that we’ve received of Towery’s spying on a conference of the Evergreen State College in Olympia about tactics for the protests at the DNC in Denver in '08, Republican—Democratic National Convention, and the Republican National Convention in St. Paul in ’08, and who was going to do what, the red, yellow and green zones, and specifically what was going to happen on the Monday of the convention. And it was the RNC Welcome Committee, which then got raided and became the RNC 8—claimed that they were planning acts of terrorism, which were in reality acts of nonviolent civil disobedience. So this goes way beyond Fort Lewis and PMR, and there's a full—there seems to be a much larger agenda, as we’ve seen in other places, of nonviolent activism equals terrorism equals anarchism equals justification for whatever spying or law enforcement action we want to take.

AMYGOODMAN: I want to—

LARRYHILDES: And obviously this is not—sorry, go ahead, Amy.

AMYGOODMAN: I want to read from your lawsuit. You write, quote, "In addition to the Army, Coast Guard, and Olympia Police Department, the following agencies are known to have spied on, infiltrated, or otherwise monitored the activities of PMR and/or related or associated activists: Thurston County Sheriff’s Office, Grays Harbor Sheriff’s Office, Pierce County Sheriff’s Office, Tacoma Police Department, Lakewood Police Department, Ft. Lewis Police Department, 504th Military Police Division, Aberdeen Police Department, The Evergreen State College Police Department, the Lacey Police Department, the [Tumwater] Police Department, the Seattle Police Department, the King County Sheriff’s Office, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Federal Protective Service, other Divisions of the Department of Homeland Security, Naval Investigative Services, Air Force Intelligence (which has created a special PMRSDS taskforce at McGwire Air Force Base in New Jersey), The Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Seattle Joint Terrorism Taskforce, as well as the previously discussed civilian employees of the City of Olympia. This list is likely incomplete," you write. That is a very extensive list, Larry Hildes.

LARRYHILDES: It is. And it turns out it is incomplete. And those were all agencies that we had documents obtained from Public Records Act requests showing that they were directly involved. So now we’re finding out there’s more agencies. The Evergreen State College was giving regular reports to the State Patrol, to the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office and to Towery and Rudd about activities of SDS on campus at Evergreen. And there’s an extensive discussion about the conference about the DNC and RNC protests and that the chief of police is the source for the information. But, yeah, now we’ve got L.A. This gets bizarre. And we received 9,440 pages of sealed documents from the Army as a Christmas present on December 21st that—that I can’t even talk about, because they insisted that everything was privileged. It was supposed to be privileged as to private information and security information, but it’s everything, all kinds of emails. So, yeah, I mean, it starts out sounding very encompassing, and we’re finding out we were conservative about what agencies were involved.

AMYGOODMAN: I wanted to bring Glenn Crespo into this conversation, a Bay Area community organizer. You were the peace activist who John Towery, you say, attempted to persuade you to purchase guns, to learn to shoot. How did you meet him, and what happened when he tried to get you to do this?

GLENNCRESPO: Well, this kind of relationship spanned over a two-, maybe two-and-a-half-year period of time. I first met him at a weapons symposium demonstration in Tacoma, Washington, in downtown Tacoma. I didn’t introduce myself to him at that point, but I saw him there. He came out—he actually came out of the symposium, and this was a conference where Lockheed Martin and all these other weapons manufacturers and distributors were showing their wares. He came out of that, and it appeared to me as if other activists in Olympia had already become friends with them. He was very friendly with them, they were very friendly with him. That was the first time I saw him. That was in mid-2007. Not long after that, he organized a Tacoma PMR meeting, and I wasn’t really involved—

AMYGOODMAN: Port Militarization Resistance.

GLENNCRESPO: Yeah, exactly. And I wasn’t very involved in that, but I did get the mass email. So I figured, because I lived in Tacoma, I might as well go check it out. He was the first person there. I was the second person there. He introduced himself. I introduced myself. And he asked me about a poster that he had made regarding an upcoming demonstration, and he said he was going to bring it to the group and see if we could get consensus on whether or not it was OK if he put it up. And I told him that—I looked at the poster and said, you know, "This is pretty general." There’s no particular reason I really think that he has to get consensus on whether or not he can put a poster up that’s kind of basically just time and place and description of the event. And that was the first time I met him.

He later on used that conversation as a way to boost our rapport between each other, when he said that he thought that that conversation was really profound to him, that he believed that it was interesting that I kind of wanted to—or suggested that he bypass some sort of consensus process regarding this poster, so that he can just do—you know, that he could do what he wants. You know, he could put the poster up if he wants to. That was very interesting. I realized that in retrospect, that that was a way that he tried to broaden or expand upon our friendship in the beginning.

AMYGOODMAN: And then, where did the guns come in?

GLENNCRESPO: Probably within the six to seven months after meeting him, so late—late 2007. He had started coming to events at the house I was living at in Tacoma. We were doing—we did a lending library. And we were doing a lot of organizing regarding the Tacoma Immigration and Customs detention center, so the ICE detention center. He would go to those meetings. He would come over for potlucks. So both public and private events, he kind of worked his way in as a friend.

He produced handgun to me in our kitchen, just between he and I. He carried it in his side pocket. He said he always carried a handgun on him. And he emptied it. He put the magazine out. He cleared the chamber, and he handed it to me. And he said he always carries one on him. And that, that was the first time he really talked about guns with me. And I was caught off guard, because at the time I was in my early twenties. I had never held a—I don’t even think I had seen a handgun, really, like that before. And that was kind of the beginning of him starting to talk more about guns. And he said—he had said that if we ever wanted to go shooting, being me and my friends, or myself in particular, that he would take us shooting, or, you know, he knows where all the gun shows are at, so we could go to gun shows if—you know, if we’re interested. And then, later on, these things did happen, when he prompted myself and others to go to the Puyallup Gun Show and purchase—purchase a rifle. And then, that went into going to shooting ranges that he was already a member of. He would drive us to all of these things, take us to these shooting ranges.

And this seemed fairly innocuous to me, in the beginning. I mean, Washington is a pretty gun-owner-friendly state. It didn’t—it didn’t really surprise me, because he wasn’t saying anything crazy or really implying anything crazy at that point. But about a year into that, there was a significant shift in his personality. Whereas in the beginning he was very optimistic and very—seemed very hopeful and kind of seemed lonely—I mean, he was, you know, in his early forties, early to mid-forties. He primarily surrounding himself with people who were in their early twenties. And he just came off as if he was kind of a sweet, harmless guy and was kind of lonely and wanted to hang out with people that he felt like he had something in common with, as far as his ideas went. But like I said, into a year into that relationship, he started to become a little bit more sinister and dark in his demeanor, in his—the things he would talk about.

And this continued to go into him giving myself and another friend a set of documents that were military strategy documents, and he said that he—he suggested that "we," whatever that meant, use those documents in "our actions." And these were documents on how to properly execute military operations. And then, following that, he showed people at my house, including myself, how to clear a building with a firearm. And these things were prompted by him. He would basically say, "Hey, do you—you know, check this out. Look, I could explain this stuff." And he would just go into it, on how to, for example, in this case, clear a building with a firearm. So he had a mock—you know, he would hold a rifle up, or a make-believe rifle, and clear—stalk around the lower levels of our house and up the stairwell, all the way up the second stairwell into the attic, and the whole time talking about how he would—you know, how he was clearing corners and checking angles and all this stuff that nobody particularly had any interest in.

And around the same time, he had, you know, conversations with me about how he believed that anarchists were very similar to fascists, in a—almost in a positive light, where he was saying that they both don’t care about the law and don’t use the law to get what they need or what they want, and that he believed that the only way anarchism or anarchy would ever work, in his words, would be if five billion people died. So this is kind of in his—in the midst of his weird, sinister behavior that started to happen, that I thought that he was depressed. I thought that he was basically going through some sort of like maybe existential crisis, or maybe he was fed up with things. I wasn’t really sure. He always talked about him having issues at the house—at his home. He had implied that his wife was concerned that he was cheating on her, and that’s why we could never go to his house, because his wife didn’t like us, his other friends, or whatever.

He submitted an article in the same—like the last—you know, that last half of the time that I knew him as a friend. He submitted an article to a magazine that I was editor of in early 2009, that was written from the perspective of 9/11 hijackers. And I remember this very specifically, because he gave me a copy, a physical copy, when we were on our way to go get coffee. And I remember reading it, and probably about a quarter of the way through realizing I didn’t even feel comfortable touching it, like touching the physical document with my hands. It was the weirdest thing in the world, because it was kind of—it was basically implying—or seeming sympathetic with the 9/11 hijackers. And he wanted me to publish this in his—in the next issue of the magazine I was editor of. So I just—I actually—because he was being so forceful, I just didn’t do the magazine again. That first issue was the last issue. And once he submitted that paper, I didn’t publish it ever again.

AMYGOODMAN: Let me ask your lawyer, Larry Hildes, is this entrapment, I mean, when you’re talking about this whole progression that Glenn Crespo went through with the man he thought was named John Jacob, who in fact is John Towery, working at Fort Lewis? He’s military personnel.

LARRYHILDES: I think, absolutely, it was an attempted entrapment. He went step by step. He misjudged our folks. He thought our—he correctly saw that our folks were angry and upset about what was going on, but misjudged them. It feels like we could have ended up with a Cleveland Five or an 803 situation very easily, if he had had his way. Fortunately, our folks’ reaction was: "This is really weird and creepy. Get away from me." And it speaks to how little he understood the nature of the antiwar movement and how little he understood people’s actual commitment to nonviolent action, to not seeing the troops themselves as the enemies—

AMYGOODMAN: Larry—

LARRYHILDES: —but seeing the war—yeah, I’m—yeah, go ahead.

AMYGOODMAN: Larry Hildes, we don’t have much time, but I just want to ask about Posse Comitatus and the laws that separate the military—I mean, they’re not supposed to be marching through the streets of the United States.

LARRYHILDES: Yeah, right.

AMYGOODMAN: What about this issue of investigating? And how far and extensive is this infiltration campaign, where you put in people, they change their names, and they try to entrap or they change the nature of what these actions are?

LARRYHILDES: I think they crossed the line. They claim they’re allowed to do some level of investigative work to protect military activities, military shipments. But entrapping people—attempting to entrap people into conspiracies where they can get charged with major felonies they had no intention of committing, dealing with law enforcement agencies around the country to keep tabs on activists, following them to protests in Denver and St. Paul that have absolutely nothing to do with military shipments, they crossed the line into law enforcement, into civilian law enforcement.

And they did so quite knowingly and deliberately, and created this cover story that Towery was working for the fusion center, reporting to the sheriff’s office, not doing this during his work time, because they were well aware—in fact, he got paid overtime for attending the RNC, DNC conference at Evergreen, by the Army. So the Army was expressly paying him to monitor, disrupt and destroy these folks’ activism and their lives. I mean, we had—at one point, Brendan Dunn had four cases at the same time in four counties, because they kept stopping him. Seven times he got arrested or cited; Jeff Berryhill several times; Glenn Crespo. People would get busted over and over and over. Towery was attending their personal parties, their birthday parties, their going-away parties, and taking these vicious notes and passing them on about how to undermine these folks, how to undermine their activities, how to destroy their lives. This is way into Posse Comitatus. This is way beyond any legitimate military role.

And it’s exactly why Posse Comitatus exists. The job of the military, as they see it, is to seek out the enemy and destroy them, neutralize them. When the enemy is nonviolent dissenters and the First Amendment becomes the enemy, as Chris Pyle, our expert, who was the investigator for the Church Committee, put it—the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment are an inconvenience to the Army; they ignore them; they’re not sworn to uphold them in the same way—it becomes a very dangerous situation. And yes, they are way over into illegal conduct. They’re into entrapment operations. They’re into trying to silence dissent against them, and apparently much larger. This case just keeps getting bigger as we go. And we’re set for trial, I should say, on June 2nd—

AMYGOODMAN: And we will continue to cover this.

LARRYHILDES: —at this point.

AMYGOODMAN: I want to thank you both for being with us. Larry Hildes, lead attorney representing the antiwar activists spied on by the military, civil rights attorney with the National Lawyers Guild, speaking to us from Seattle, Washington. And Glenn, thank you so much for being with us. Glenn Crespo is a plaintiff in the lawsuit, a community organizer in the Bay Area of California.

This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. When we come back, spies in the movement. We’re going to go back some time to the civil rights movement. Stay with us.

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Tue, 25 Feb 2014 00:00:00 -0500Freedom Summer: How Civil Rights Activists Braved Violence to Challenge Racism in 1964 Mississippihttp://www.democracynow.org/2014/1/23/freedom_summer_how_civil_rights_activists
tag:democracynow.org,2014-01-23:en/story/6f7524 AMY GOODMAN : We&#8217;re broadcasting from the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Hundreds of people marched in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, on Wednesday to mark the 50th anniversary of Freedom Day. On January 22nd, 1964, Fannie Lou Hamer and other civil rights activists marched around the Forrest County Courthouse in support of black voting rights.
The march was the beginning of an historic year in Mississippi. Months later, civil rights groups launched Freedom Summer. Over a thousand out-of-state volunteers traveled to Mississippi to help register voters and set up Freedom Schools. Out of Freedom Summer grew the formation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party that challenged the legitimacy of the white-only Mississippi Democratic Party at the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City. Events are being held across Mississippi this year, in 2014, to mark the 50th anniversary of this historic moment.
Here at the Sundance Film Festival, a documentary entitled Freedom Summer , directed by Stanley Nelson, has just premiered. This is a trailer for the film.
JUDGE TOM P. BRADY : I don&#8217;t want the nigger, as I have known him and contacted him during my lifetime, to control the making of a law that controls me, to control the government under which I live.
UNIDENTIFIED : I don&#8217;t think people understand how violent Mississippi was. If black people try and vote, they can get hurt or killed.
FREEDOM SUMMER VOLUNTEER : You&#8217;re not a registered voter, you&#8217;re not a first-class citizen, man.
UNIDENTIFIED : They would say, &quot;You&#8217;re right, boy. We should be registered to vote. But I ain&#8217;t going down there and messing with them white people.&quot;
BOB MOSES : We hope to send into Mississippi this summer upwards of 1,000 students from all around the country who will engage in Freedom Schools, voter registration activity, and open up Mississippi to the country.
GOV . ROSS BARNETT : We face absolute extinction of all we hold dear. We must be strong enough to crush the enemy.
REPORTER : The three civil rights workers who disappeared in Mississippi last Sunday night still have not been heard from.
UNIDENTIFIED : It was always in the back of everybody&#8217;s minds that bad things were going to happen. But if you cared about this country and cared about democracy, then you had to go down there.
AMY GOODMAN : That&#8217;s an excerpt of Freedom Summer . The film&#8217;s director, Stanley Nelson, joins us here in Park City, Utah, the Emmy Award-winning MacArthur genius fellow. His past films include Freedom Riders , The Murder of Emmett Till .
Welcome back to Democracy Now!
STANLEY NELSON : Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN : It&#8217;s great to have you with us. So, you did Freedom Riders , and we sat here in Park City and talked about that with some of the Freedom Riders. Talk about this historic year and your documentary that focuses on the summer months of 1964.
STANLEY NELSON : Well, in the summer of 1964, it was decided to send a thousand young people, mostly white college students, down to Mississippi to help register people to vote, have Freedom Schools and to challenge the Democratic Party in Atlantic City. And that was historic, because Mississippi was thought of as this place that you didn&#8217;t go; you couldn&#8217;t go to Mississippi, you know; you had to challenge what was happening in Mississippi from the outside. So it was a move made by SNCC , Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and a couple of other organizations to really say, &quot;You know, no, we can work in Mississippi, and we&#8217;re going to do it in the summer of 1964.&quot;
AMY GOODMAN : I want to turn to another clip. This is from Freedom Summer . It begins with civil rights activist Bob Moses and Julian Bond discussing the plan for Mississippi Summer.
BOB MOSES : What really is important is that they get down and kind of just melt away into the black population. If we could just get everybody through the entry point and into the community, the black community will house them and also harbor them.
JULIAN BOND : The genius of the Freedom Summer is that these volunteers were spread all over the state. The Freedom Summer workers are everywhere. They&#8217;re in almost every little big town. Almost every place where you can go, they are there.
REPORTER : Yesterday, the first 200 civil rights workers arrived in Mississippi and fanned out over the state. Another 800 will follow. The students were assigned living quarters in Negro homes from a central office.
DAISY HARRIS : When Charles and Bill came by the house and told us that they need some homes for the civil right workers to live, I said, &quot;Well, I don&#8217;t have that much room.&quot; I said, &quot;But yeah, we&#8217;ll be happy to do it, you know.&quot; And then I told my husband about it. He said, &quot;Yeah, they can stay here.&quot; I felt that the time had come to make—help make a change. I had three sons, and I didn&#8217;t want them to go through what I had gone through and what I had seen. So, I was determined to help make a change. I said, &quot;Well, they&#8217;ll have to take the twin beds, and the boys have to double up.&quot; They were happy over to know that somebody was coming from—all we had to do is say &quot;from North.&quot;
AMY GOODMAN : That&#8217;s an excerpt from the new documentary, Freedom Summer , that&#8217;s just premiered here at Sundance. At the end of the clip, we heard from a local Mississippi resident named Daisy Harris. Stanley Nelson, talk more about the role of Bob Moses, Julian Bond and Daisy Harris.
STANLEY NELSON : Sure. Well, Bob Moses went down to Mississippi in 1961, when everybody was saying, &quot;You can&#8217;t go to Mississippi.&quot; And he goes down to Mississippi pretty much by himself and goes to rural Mississippi and is knocking on doors trying to register people to vote. And he is very unsuccessful, actually, in getting people to actually—he gets some people to go down to the courthouse, but when they get to the courthouse, very few are actually registered. He&#8217;s joined by more SNCC workers, more activists, and they do the same thing, but they&#8217;re not very successful. So they come up with this plan to draw attention to Mississippi by bringing this thousand students down there in the summer of 1964.
One of the big things, of the important things that happened was that the white kids who go down to Mississippi, there&#8217;s nowhere for them to stay. They have to stay in the black community. So they had to get volunteers, local residents of Mississippi, to volunteer to house these people. And it was such an incredibly brave thing to do, because not only did they have to take the brunt of the violence that came with Freedom Summer, but they had to stay after. And so, you know, people like Daisy Harris were just amazingly brave in what they did.
AMY GOODMAN : Talk about that summer, the murder of the three civil rights activists. And we talk about three, but there were many other murders, of course.
STANLEY NELSON : Right, right. There had been many murders in Mississippi. But the first day of Freedom Summer—it was actually before the first day. So, all the volunteers went to a training program in Oxford, Ohio, and so they were there being trained, and there was news that a church had been bombed in Mississippi. So three of the workers go down there early, a day early, to check on the bombing, and they immediately disappear. And that kind of cast a shadow over the whole summer, because for most of the summer they were missing. You know, nobody knew what had happened. People in the movement, people—the SNCC workers, people in the movement, they said they knew immediately when they disappeared that they would never be found alive.
AMY GOODMAN : And they were Mickey Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman.
STANLEY NELSON : Right.
AMY GOODMAN : We have a clip from Freedom Summer beginning with Dave Dennis, who led the Congress of Racial Equality operations in Mississippi, speaking at James Chaney&#8217;s funeral.
DAVE DENNIS : I want to talk about is really what I really grieve about. I don&#8217;t grieve for Chaney, because the fact I feel that he lived a fuller life than many of us will ever live. I feel that he&#8217;s got his freedom, and we&#8217;re still fighting for it.
BRUCE WATSON : Dave Dennis&#8217;s speech was a turning point in the summer, because everybody wanted him to say the usual things that you would say at a funeral, and Dave Dennis just couldn&#8217;t do it. He challenged the people at the memorial, and he challenged the whole movement.
DAVE DENNIS : You see, we&#8217;re all tired. You see, I know what&#8217;s going to happen. I feel it deep in my heart. When they find the people who killed those guys in Neshoba County...
All of the deep emotions, things I&#8217;d been going through leading up to this particular moment, began to come out, boil up in me, you might call this. And then looking out there and seeing Ben Chaney, James Chaney&#8217;s little brother, I lost it. I totally just lost it.
Don&#8217;t bow down anymore! Hold your heads up! We want our freedom now. I don&#8217;t want to have to go to another memorial. Tired of funerals. Tired of it! Got to stand up!
AMY GOODMAN : The funeral of James Chaney. Their bodies were found August 4th in Mississippi, in Philadelphia, Mississippi.
STANLEY NELSON : Right.
AMY GOODMAN : Why it was so controversial so many years later when President Reagan, then running for president, launched his presidential campaign speaking there in Philadelphia, but not addressing that issue.
STANLEY NELSON : Right, right. Well, that was kind of a slap in the face to a lot of people who understood the civil rights movement&#8217;s history, was, you know, why do it there? You know, what is he saying by doing that? So it was very strange.
AMY GOODMAN : Well, speaking of presidential politics, it was that summer, too, 1964, of the Democratic convention in Atlantic City. Let&#8217;s turn to Fannie Lou Hamer speaking at that convention in Atlantic City.
FANNIE LOU HAMER : Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off of the hooks because our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings, in America?
AMY GOODMAN : That was Fannie Lou Hamer in 1964, Democratic convention. Talk about the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, Fannie Lou Hamer.
STANLEY NELSON : Well, one of the things that was done in Freedom Summer was to register people in this new party called the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. And the thing about that was, all you had to do was sign your name on a piece of paper. You didn&#8217;t have to go down to the courthouse. You didn&#8217;t have to expose yourself to this violence, these repercussions that could happen from actually going to the courthouse to register. So they formed this new political party that—where they registered 60,000 to 80,000 people to be part—because one of the things that was said was that black people didn&#8217;t want to vote. That&#8217;s why black people couldn&#8217;t vote: They didn&#8217;t want to vote. And one thing, you know, we have to understand about Mississippi that made Mississippi unique was, African Americans were 50 percent of the population in Mississippi, but only 6.7 percent were registered to vote.
So, they went down to Atlantic City—went up to Atlantic City to challenge the Democratic Party and say, you know, &quot;We should be seated as the delegation from Mississippi, because we are integrated. There&#8217;s black people and white people in our party, in the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. The all-white delegation from Mississippi has not let any black people become part of the delegation. So seat us instead.&quot; So, they did this incredible, passionate plea to be seated. And they had Martin Luther King spoke. They—Rita Schwerner, Mickey Schwerner&#8217;s wife, spoke, who was now known to be dead. But the final speaker, the big speaker, was Fannie Lou Hamer. And that&#8217;s a little bit of her speech that you saw there.
AMY GOODMAN : You did Freedom Riders , that remarkable documentary. You&#8217;ve now just finished Freedom Summer . You&#8217;re steeped in this civil rights history. What surprised you in doing this documentary?
STANLEY NELSON : I think one of the most surprising things to me was Lyndon Johnson and Lyndon Johnson&#8217;s reaction to the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. You know, there&#8217;s an interview that we do with Taylor Branch, who says that, you know, Lyndon Johnson had kind of a mini nervous breakdown because he was so scared that the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party would disrupt the convention. And Johnson really thought that Bobby Kennedy had this whole plan: If the convention was disrupted, then Bobby Kennedy was going to step in and take the nomination from him. And so, he—
AMY GOODMAN : Because this is a year after the assassination—not even—
STANLEY NELSON : Right.
AMY GOODMAN : —a year after the assassination of John Kennedy.
STANLEY NELSON : Right. And anybody who was around at that time, you know, knows that that is preposterous, that—you know, I mean, Lyndon Johnson was kind of this hero at that point, because he took over the presidency. But he really felt that that would happen. And so, he&#8217;s behind the scenes, you know, trying to destroy the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. But even more amazingly, he&#8217;s tape-recorded all his phone calls where he talks about this stuff, you know, very candidly and openly, about how he&#8217;s going to maneuver. And, you know, &quot;Don&#8217;t put my name in it. Don&#8217;t let them know that I&#8217;m doing it.&quot; So, I mean, his role in that is really something that&#8217;s hard to be believed.
AMY GOODMAN : Gives a speech when Fannie Lou Hamer gives her speech—
STANLEY NELSON : Right.
AMY GOODMAN : —so that the press will cover him.
STANLEY NELSON : Right, right. So—go ahead.
AMY GOODMAN : Just a little correction: Before, when I said about President Reagan, he—the speech he gave August 3rd, almost the same day, years later, that the bodies of Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman were found, was right after the Republican convention in 1980, when he was nominated, and he was launching, you know, his run for the presidency as the Republican candidate. So, finally, with Freedom Summer , where do you plan to go with this? This is going to be broadcasting on—as part of the American Experience series?
STANLEY NELSON : Yeah. It broadcasts on June 24th in the summer, you know, this summer, so that&#8217;s going to be a big deal. We&#8217;re going to go everywhere we possibly can. We&#8217;re going to do a big thing in Mississippi. This is the 50th anniversary of Freedom Summer, so there&#8217;s already all these events happening. And, you know, one of the things we did with Freedom Riders was kind of go wherever we can to show the film. We want to show the film to young people. I think it&#8217;s really important that young people understand how hard people fought for the right to vote. And some of those rights are being taking away from us today, and some people just don&#8217;t vote, you know? A lot—a big portion of this county just doesn&#8217;t vote. So we really want to get this film out to young people and get it wherever we can.
AMY GOODMAN : Well, Stanley Nelson, thanks so much for being with us, award-winning director of the new documentary, Freedom Summer . It&#8217;s airing on PBS&#8217;s American Experience on June 24th. His other films include Freedom Riders and The Murder of Emmett Till .
This is Democracy Now! , democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report . When we come back, Through [a] Lens Darkly . Stay with us. AMYGOODMAN: We’re broadcasting from the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Hundreds of people marched in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, on Wednesday to mark the 50th anniversary of Freedom Day. On January 22nd, 1964, Fannie Lou Hamer and other civil rights activists marched around the Forrest County Courthouse in support of black voting rights.

The march was the beginning of an historic year in Mississippi. Months later, civil rights groups launched Freedom Summer. Over a thousand out-of-state volunteers traveled to Mississippi to help register voters and set up Freedom Schools. Out of Freedom Summer grew the formation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party that challenged the legitimacy of the white-only Mississippi Democratic Party at the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City. Events are being held across Mississippi this year, in 2014, to mark the 50th anniversary of this historic moment.

Here at the Sundance Film Festival, a documentary entitled Freedom Summer, directed by Stanley Nelson, has just premiered. This is a trailer for the film.

JUDGETOM P. BRADY: I don’t want the nigger, as I have known him and contacted him during my lifetime, to control the making of a law that controls me, to control the government under which I live.

UNIDENTIFIED: I don’t think people understand how violent Mississippi was. If black people try and vote, they can get hurt or killed.

FREEDOMSUMMERVOLUNTEER: You’re not a registered voter, you’re not a first-class citizen, man.

UNIDENTIFIED: They would say, "You’re right, boy. We should be registered to vote. But I ain’t going down there and messing with them white people."

BOBMOSES: We hope to send into Mississippi this summer upwards of 1,000 students from all around the country who will engage in Freedom Schools, voter registration activity, and open up Mississippi to the country.

GOV. ROSSBARNETT: We face absolute extinction of all we hold dear. We must be strong enough to crush the enemy.

REPORTER: The three civil rights workers who disappeared in Mississippi last Sunday night still have not been heard from.

UNIDENTIFIED: It was always in the back of everybody’s minds that bad things were going to happen. But if you cared about this country and cared about democracy, then you had to go down there.

AMYGOODMAN: It’s great to have you with us. So, you did Freedom Riders, and we sat here in Park City and talked about that with some of the Freedom Riders. Talk about this historic year and your documentary that focuses on the summer months of 1964.

STANLEYNELSON: Well, in the summer of 1964, it was decided to send a thousand young people, mostly white college students, down to Mississippi to help register people to vote, have Freedom Schools and to challenge the Democratic Party in Atlantic City. And that was historic, because Mississippi was thought of as this place that you didn’t go; you couldn’t go to Mississippi, you know; you had to challenge what was happening in Mississippi from the outside. So it was a move made by SNCC, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and a couple of other organizations to really say, "You know, no, we can work in Mississippi, and we’re going to do it in the summer of 1964."

AMYGOODMAN: I want to turn to another clip. This is from Freedom Summer. It begins with civil rights activist Bob Moses and Julian Bond discussing the plan for Mississippi Summer.

BOBMOSES: What really is important is that they get down and kind of just melt away into the black population. If we could just get everybody through the entry point and into the community, the black community will house them and also harbor them.

JULIANBOND: The genius of the Freedom Summer is that these volunteers were spread all over the state. The Freedom Summer workers are everywhere. They’re in almost every little big town. Almost every place where you can go, they are there.

REPORTER: Yesterday, the first 200 civil rights workers arrived in Mississippi and fanned out over the state. Another 800 will follow. The students were assigned living quarters in Negro homes from a central office.

DAISYHARRIS: When Charles and Bill came by the house and told us that they need some homes for the civil right workers to live, I said, "Well, I don’t have that much room." I said, "But yeah, we’ll be happy to do it, you know." And then I told my husband about it. He said, "Yeah, they can stay here." I felt that the time had come to make—help make a change. I had three sons, and I didn’t want them to go through what I had gone through and what I had seen. So, I was determined to help make a change. I said, "Well, they’ll have to take the twin beds, and the boys have to double up." They were happy over to know that somebody was coming from—all we had to do is say "from North."

AMYGOODMAN: That’s an excerpt from the new documentary, Freedom Summer, that’s just premiered here at Sundance. At the end of the clip, we heard from a local Mississippi resident named Daisy Harris. Stanley Nelson, talk more about the role of Bob Moses, Julian Bond and Daisy Harris.

STANLEYNELSON: Sure. Well, Bob Moses went down to Mississippi in 1961, when everybody was saying, "You can’t go to Mississippi." And he goes down to Mississippi pretty much by himself and goes to rural Mississippi and is knocking on doors trying to register people to vote. And he is very unsuccessful, actually, in getting people to actually—he gets some people to go down to the courthouse, but when they get to the courthouse, very few are actually registered. He’s joined by more SNCC workers, more activists, and they do the same thing, but they’re not very successful. So they come up with this plan to draw attention to Mississippi by bringing this thousand students down there in the summer of 1964.

One of the big things, of the important things that happened was that the white kids who go down to Mississippi, there’s nowhere for them to stay. They have to stay in the black community. So they had to get volunteers, local residents of Mississippi, to volunteer to house these people. And it was such an incredibly brave thing to do, because not only did they have to take the brunt of the violence that came with Freedom Summer, but they had to stay after. And so, you know, people like Daisy Harris were just amazingly brave in what they did.

AMYGOODMAN: Talk about that summer, the murder of the three civil rights activists. And we talk about three, but there were many other murders, of course.

STANLEYNELSON: Right, right. There had been many murders in Mississippi. But the first day of Freedom Summer—it was actually before the first day. So, all the volunteers went to a training program in Oxford, Ohio, and so they were there being trained, and there was news that a church had been bombed in Mississippi. So three of the workers go down there early, a day early, to check on the bombing, and they immediately disappear. And that kind of cast a shadow over the whole summer, because for most of the summer they were missing. You know, nobody knew what had happened. People in the movement, people—the SNCC workers, people in the movement, they said they knew immediately when they disappeared that they would never be found alive.

AMYGOODMAN: And they were Mickey Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman.

STANLEYNELSON: Right.

AMYGOODMAN: We have a clip from Freedom Summer beginning with Dave Dennis, who led the Congress of Racial Equality operations in Mississippi, speaking at James Chaney’s funeral.

DAVEDENNIS: I want to talk about is really what I really grieve about. I don’t grieve for Chaney, because the fact I feel that he lived a fuller life than many of us will ever live. I feel that he’s got his freedom, and we’re still fighting for it.

BRUCEWATSON: Dave Dennis’s speech was a turning point in the summer, because everybody wanted him to say the usual things that you would say at a funeral, and Dave Dennis just couldn’t do it. He challenged the people at the memorial, and he challenged the whole movement.

DAVEDENNIS: You see, we’re all tired. You see, I know what’s going to happen. I feel it deep in my heart. When they find the people who killed those guys in Neshoba County...

All of the deep emotions, things I’d been going through leading up to this particular moment, began to come out, boil up in me, you might call this. And then looking out there and seeing Ben Chaney, James Chaney’s little brother, I lost it. I totally just lost it.

Don’t bow down anymore! Hold your heads up! We want our freedom now. I don’t want to have to go to another memorial. Tired of funerals. Tired of it! Got to stand up!

AMYGOODMAN: The funeral of James Chaney. Their bodies were found August 4th in Mississippi, in Philadelphia, Mississippi.

STANLEYNELSON: Right.

AMYGOODMAN: Why it was so controversial so many years later when President Reagan, then running for president, launched his presidential campaign speaking there in Philadelphia, but not addressing that issue.

STANLEYNELSON: Right, right. Well, that was kind of a slap in the face to a lot of people who understood the civil rights movement’s history, was, you know, why do it there? You know, what is he saying by doing that? So it was very strange.

AMYGOODMAN: Well, speaking of presidential politics, it was that summer, too, 1964, of the Democratic convention in Atlantic City. Let’s turn to Fannie Lou Hamer speaking at that convention in Atlantic City.

FANNIELOUHAMER: Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off of the hooks because our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings, in America?

STANLEYNELSON: Well, one of the things that was done in Freedom Summer was to register people in this new party called the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. And the thing about that was, all you had to do was sign your name on a piece of paper. You didn’t have to go down to the courthouse. You didn’t have to expose yourself to this violence, these repercussions that could happen from actually going to the courthouse to register. So they formed this new political party that—where they registered 60,000 to 80,000 people to be part—because one of the things that was said was that black people didn’t want to vote. That’s why black people couldn’t vote: They didn’t want to vote. And one thing, you know, we have to understand about Mississippi that made Mississippi unique was, African Americans were 50 percent of the population in Mississippi, but only 6.7 percent were registered to vote.

So, they went down to Atlantic City—went up to Atlantic City to challenge the Democratic Party and say, you know, "We should be seated as the delegation from Mississippi, because we are integrated. There’s black people and white people in our party, in the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. The all-white delegation from Mississippi has not let any black people become part of the delegation. So seat us instead." So, they did this incredible, passionate plea to be seated. And they had Martin Luther King spoke. They—Rita Schwerner, Mickey Schwerner’s wife, spoke, who was now known to be dead. But the final speaker, the big speaker, was Fannie Lou Hamer. And that’s a little bit of her speech that you saw there.

AMYGOODMAN: You did Freedom Riders, that remarkable documentary. You’ve now just finished Freedom Summer. You’re steeped in this civil rights history. What surprised you in doing this documentary?

STANLEYNELSON: I think one of the most surprising things to me was Lyndon Johnson and Lyndon Johnson’s reaction to the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. You know, there’s an interview that we do with Taylor Branch, who says that, you know, Lyndon Johnson had kind of a mini nervous breakdown because he was so scared that the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party would disrupt the convention. And Johnson really thought that Bobby Kennedy had this whole plan: If the convention was disrupted, then Bobby Kennedy was going to step in and take the nomination from him. And so, he—

AMYGOODMAN: Because this is a year after the assassination—not even—

STANLEYNELSON: Right.

AMYGOODMAN: —a year after the assassination of John Kennedy.

STANLEYNELSON: Right. And anybody who was around at that time, you know, knows that that is preposterous, that—you know, I mean, Lyndon Johnson was kind of this hero at that point, because he took over the presidency. But he really felt that that would happen. And so, he’s behind the scenes, you know, trying to destroy the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. But even more amazingly, he’s tape-recorded all his phone calls where he talks about this stuff, you know, very candidly and openly, about how he’s going to maneuver. And, you know, "Don’t put my name in it. Don’t let them know that I’m doing it." So, I mean, his role in that is really something that’s hard to be believed.

AMYGOODMAN: Gives a speech when Fannie Lou Hamer gives her speech—

STANLEYNELSON: Right.

AMYGOODMAN: —so that the press will cover him.

STANLEYNELSON: Right, right. So—go ahead.

AMYGOODMAN: Just a little correction: Before, when I said about President Reagan, he—the speech he gave August 3rd, almost the same day, years later, that the bodies of Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman were found, was right after the Republican convention in 1980, when he was nominated, and he was launching, you know, his run for the presidency as the Republican candidate. So, finally, with Freedom Summer, where do you plan to go with this? This is going to be broadcasting on—as part of the American Experience series?

STANLEYNELSON: Yeah. It broadcasts on June 24th in the summer, you know, this summer, so that’s going to be a big deal. We’re going to go everywhere we possibly can. We’re going to do a big thing in Mississippi. This is the 50th anniversary of Freedom Summer, so there’s already all these events happening. And, you know, one of the things we did with Freedom Riders was kind of go wherever we can to show the film. We want to show the film to young people. I think it’s really important that young people understand how hard people fought for the right to vote. And some of those rights are being taking away from us today, and some people just don’t vote, you know? A lot—a big portion of this county just doesn’t vote. So we really want to get this film out to young people and get it wherever we can.

AMYGOODMAN: Well, Stanley Nelson, thanks so much for being with us, award-winning director of the new documentary, Freedom Summer. It’s airing on PBS’s American Experience on June 24th. His other films include Freedom Riders and The Murder of Emmett Till.

This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. When we come back, Through [a] Lens Darkly. Stay with us.

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Thu, 23 Jan 2014 00:00:00 -0500"Civil Society Isn't Welcome & Corporations Are": Youth Activist on Being Banned from Climate Talkshttp://www.democracynow.org/2013/11/19/civil_society_isn_t_welcome_corporations
tag:democracynow.org,2013-11-19:en/story/3a8b18 AMY GOODMAN : Just before we went to air, I went outside, because there was a young woman who is not allowed inside the conference right now. Her name is Clémence Hutin, and we had to meet her outside the National Stadium since she has now been banned from COP 19. This is what she had to say.
CLÉMENCE HUTIN : Clémence, I&#8217;m 23 years old. When we were in the plenary on Monday, we were listening to Yeb Saño&#8217;s speech. We gave him a standing ovation, because it was very heartbreaking. The whole room was very moved. Many negotiators were crying. So, we just felt the need to express basic solidarity at this time. So we clapped, and we escorted him to the exit. We actually warned the chief of security that we were going to do this. And when we met him at the entrance, it was very emotional. He hugged us. He greeted us. He thanked us for the solidarity. And we decided to get our banners out that we were preparing for the action, a sanctioned action, taking place the next day. And the banner was reading: &quot;2012, 1,000 dead; 2013, 10,000-plus dead? How many more?&quot; Just that, and the names of the places that had been hit by the typhoon. And the security just ripped the banners from our hands. They escorted us to the exit immediately, and we were de-badged within 10 minutes.
AMY GOODMAN : So, are you allowed back into the summit?
CLÉMENCE HUTIN : No. We&#8217;ve heard—the next day, the chief of security had told us that we could come back in; however, we were notified that Christiana Figueres had made the personal decision to ban us from the U.N. climate talks. We heard that we had been banned for five years. We heard about a lifetime ban, as well. Yesterday, thankfully, she sent us a letter to tell us that we could come in, back in, next year. But we are still banned this week for having expressed solidarity.
AMY GOODMAN : How do you feel about this?
CLÉMENCE HUTIN : I feel very depressed. I&#8217;m 23 years old. I&#8217;m fighting for climate justice. And I see corporate logos absolutely everywhere here in the COP . The ArcelorMittal logo is stamped across the plenary hall.
AMY GOODMAN : And that is?
CLÉMENCE HUTIN : ArcelorMittal is a huge steel and mining company that is one of the just the dirtiest corporations in the world. They have their logo stamped on the plenary hall. They are most welcome, and a young person fighting for the climate is not. And I just don&#8217;t understand what the secretary&#8217;s message is here, because, for me, the UNFCCC is a democratic space. I don&#8217;t understand why civil society isn&#8217;t welcome here and corporations are. And I think it&#8217;s a very wrong message to be sending right now.
AMY GOODMAN : What does this mean? Where do you head now?
CLÉMENCE HUTIN : Right now I&#8217;m staying here in Warsaw. I&#8217;m helping young people organize outside of the talks, so that we can make our voices heard even though we&#8217;re not inside. And, yeah, maybe I&#8217;ll be back next year. I&#8217;m not sure.
AMY GOODMAN : Why does climate matter to you?
CLÉMENCE HUTIN : For me, climate is the biggest issue, the biggest challenge that humanity has ever faced. And we are at a tipping point, the crossroads. The time is now. We cannot delay this any further. People have been negotiating my whole life, and I feel like they need to stop speaking, stop talking, stop negotiating, and just act. We need to reduce emissions now. We need to leave fossil fuels in the ground now. And I&#8217;m feeling quite frustrated at the moment because that&#8217;s not the message that we&#8217;ve been getting this year.
AMY GOODMAN : You&#8217;re standing in front of a welcome sign.
CLÉMENCE HUTIN : Yeah, yeah, that&#8217;s quite ironic, isn&#8217;t it? And I&#8217;m also standing in front of a sign that reads &quot;I care.&quot; And I don&#8217;t feel like many people care here among the negotiators.
AMY GOODMAN : Will this stop your climate activism?
CLÉMENCE HUTIN : No, it won&#8217;t stop my climate activism; however, I may choose to fight this in a different way, because I feel like my faith in the UNFCCC is shaken right now.
AMY GOODMAN : That was Clémence Hutin. She is a young French woman who was thrown out with two other young activists. They were here, part of the young NGOs, YOUNGO , as they&#8217;re called, but because they stood with you with this banner as you walked out, to show solidarity, they have been banned from the summit for the entire summit. As you heard, she got a letter from Christiana Figueres saying she would not be allowed back in. It reminds me of two years ago after Anjali Appadurai, a young American student from College of the Atlantic, gave an address where the head of the general assembly said &quot;thank you&quot; at the end of the summit, &quot;wish you had given this speech at the beginning.&quot; She was banned the next year in Doha for the first week of that summit. Do you think that Clémence and the other two young activists should be allowed in?
NADEREV &quot; YEB &quot; SAÑO: I have made representations to the secretariat for them to be allowed in. Obviously, they were here to express solidarity with the people of the Philippines, and that is a very moving gesture on their part. I see no reason why they should have been banned. We have received official explanation that only sanctioned actions within the venue would be tolerated. And the act of solidarity where they escorted me and unfurled some small banners was interpreted as an unsanctioned act. And, for me, that is very sad, because these are young people attending their first COP . And that is truly shaking, I would imagine, for them.
AMY GOODMAN : Have you had a chance to talk to Christiana Figueres, the head of the UNFCCC , to—since she personally has banned them?
NADEREV &quot; YEB &quot; SAÑO: I sent correspondence to her office regarding this matter and interceding for these three young people to be allowed back in into the venue.
AMY GOODMAN : And to that other point that Clémence has made about the level of corporate involvement and the corporate sponsorship, it has been growing over the years. Now you actually, in your delegates&#8217; bags, have the corporate logos emblazoned on them. And there&#8217;s a climate—what they&#8217;re calling a Coal &amp; Climate Summit taking place at the same time here in Warsaw.
NADEREV &quot; YEB &quot; SAÑO: Oh, it is quite troubling for us to see these two meetings taking place at the same time. But I am glad to have heard Christiana Figueres exhort—give an exhortation to the coal industry that they must transform their industry. And we share that sentiment, that the coal industry and the fossil fuel industry must transform, because the single biggest culprit for climate change is the fossil fuel industry, and that is something that we should work together to transform. This is about—if we talk about the industry, this is about moving brown investments into green investments, and that cannot happen unless the industry is willing to do so.
AMY GOODMAN : Two last quick questions. You mentioned four degrees Celsius being catastrophic, very much the direction we&#8217;re headed in. What would that look like for the Philippines?
NADEREV &quot; YEB &quot; SAÑO: I can&#8217;t imagine that, Amy. That means collapse of our ecosystems, massive droughts, I would say more intense tropical cyclones. And I just can&#8217;t imagine how we will secure our food sources and our water sources. That would be more than catastrophic for my country. It&#8217;s just unthinkable.
AMY GOODMAN : Clearly, the U.S. Pentagon sees climate change as an enormous threat, putting out a report saying this is the threat of this century. And the reason it&#8217;s the, you know, Pentagon, the war department, is seeing that wars could break out over issues, for example, of climate refugees having to leave countries because they&#8217;ve been devastated and trying to get into other countries. Do you have a final message for the world, Yeb Saño?
NADEREV &quot; YEB &quot; SAÑO: It&#8217;s always hard to encapsulate a single message to the world, as this has become a complex issue. But I just reiterate my appeal to the whole world, that this is something that we can turn around. And I appeal to our common humanity to pursue our common future, because this is not just about us, the current generation, it is about intergenerational responsibility. And I appeal to world leaders. We are not—and to quote, perhaps, an American Native chief, we did not inherit this planet from our ancestors; we are merely borrowing it from future generations.
AMY GOODMAN : And the role of direct action, as you&#8217;re taking now on this ninth day of your fast, as these young people took in the summit, even though you&#8217;re an official climate negotiator representing your government? The need for direct action?
NADEREV &quot; YEB &quot; SAÑO: The Filipino spirit has always had this heart for the young people, for the youth. Even our national hero, in his most famous writings, he has said that the youth is the hope of our fatherland. And I would say the youth is the hope of this process. The youth is the hope of this planet.
AMY GOODMAN : I want to thank you very much for being with us, Naderev &quot;Yeb&quot; Saño, Philippines climate commission, head of the Philippines climate delegation, on the ninth day of a hunger fast here in Warsaw, Poland, where the COP 19 is taking place—that&#8217;s the Conference of Parties, the U.N. Framework on Climate Change Conference. Next year, COP 20 will be in Lima, Peru, and then the binding agreements will take place the next year in Paris.
This is Democracy Now! , democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report . When we come back, we&#8217;ll be joined by a reporter from India who is the one who broke the story of the confidential government documents from the U.S. secretary of state, John Kerry, to the U.S. climate negotiating team, saying &quot;loss and damage&quot; should be rephrased as &quot;blame and liability.&quot; Stay with us. AMYGOODMAN: Just before we went to air, I went outside, because there was a young woman who is not allowed inside the conference right now. Her name is Clémence Hutin, and we had to meet her outside the National Stadium since she has now been banned from COP 19. This is what she had to say.

CLÉMENCE HUTIN: Clémence, I’m 23 years old. When we were in the plenary on Monday, we were listening to Yeb Saño’s speech. We gave him a standing ovation, because it was very heartbreaking. The whole room was very moved. Many negotiators were crying. So, we just felt the need to express basic solidarity at this time. So we clapped, and we escorted him to the exit. We actually warned the chief of security that we were going to do this. And when we met him at the entrance, it was very emotional. He hugged us. He greeted us. He thanked us for the solidarity. And we decided to get our banners out that we were preparing for the action, a sanctioned action, taking place the next day. And the banner was reading: "2012, 1,000 dead; 2013, 10,000-plus dead? How many more?" Just that, and the names of the places that had been hit by the typhoon. And the security just ripped the banners from our hands. They escorted us to the exit immediately, and we were de-badged within 10 minutes.

AMYGOODMAN: So, are you allowed back into the summit?

CLÉMENCE HUTIN: No. We’ve heard—the next day, the chief of security had told us that we could come back in; however, we were notified that Christiana Figueres had made the personal decision to ban us from the U.N. climate talks. We heard that we had been banned for five years. We heard about a lifetime ban, as well. Yesterday, thankfully, she sent us a letter to tell us that we could come in, back in, next year. But we are still banned this week for having expressed solidarity.

AMYGOODMAN: How do you feel about this?

CLÉMENCE HUTIN: I feel very depressed. I’m 23 years old. I’m fighting for climate justice. And I see corporate logos absolutely everywhere here in the COP. The ArcelorMittal logo is stamped across the plenary hall.

AMYGOODMAN: And that is?

CLÉMENCE HUTIN: ArcelorMittal is a huge steel and mining company that is one of the just the dirtiest corporations in the world. They have their logo stamped on the plenary hall. They are most welcome, and a young person fighting for the climate is not. And I just don’t understand what the secretary’s message is here, because, for me, the UNFCCC is a democratic space. I don’t understand why civil society isn’t welcome here and corporations are. And I think it’s a very wrong message to be sending right now.

AMYGOODMAN: What does this mean? Where do you head now?

CLÉMENCE HUTIN: Right now I’m staying here in Warsaw. I’m helping young people organize outside of the talks, so that we can make our voices heard even though we’re not inside. And, yeah, maybe I’ll be back next year. I’m not sure.

AMYGOODMAN: Why does climate matter to you?

CLÉMENCE HUTIN: For me, climate is the biggest issue, the biggest challenge that humanity has ever faced. And we are at a tipping point, the crossroads. The time is now. We cannot delay this any further. People have been negotiating my whole life, and I feel like they need to stop speaking, stop talking, stop negotiating, and just act. We need to reduce emissions now. We need to leave fossil fuels in the ground now. And I’m feeling quite frustrated at the moment because that’s not the message that we’ve been getting this year.

AMYGOODMAN: You’re standing in front of a welcome sign.

CLÉMENCE HUTIN: Yeah, yeah, that’s quite ironic, isn’t it? And I’m also standing in front of a sign that reads "I care." And I don’t feel like many people care here among the negotiators.

AMYGOODMAN: Will this stop your climate activism?

CLÉMENCE HUTIN: No, it won’t stop my climate activism; however, I may choose to fight this in a different way, because I feel like my faith in the UNFCCC is shaken right now.

AMYGOODMAN: That was Clémence Hutin. She is a young French woman who was thrown out with two other young activists. They were here, part of the young NGOs, YOUNGO, as they’re called, but because they stood with you with this banner as you walked out, to show solidarity, they have been banned from the summit for the entire summit. As you heard, she got a letter from Christiana Figueres saying she would not be allowed back in. It reminds me of two years ago after Anjali Appadurai, a young American student from College of the Atlantic, gave an address where the head of the general assembly said "thank you" at the end of the summit, "wish you had given this speech at the beginning." She was banned the next year in Doha for the first week of that summit. Do you think that Clémence and the other two young activists should be allowed in?

NADEREV "YEB" SAÑO: I have made representations to the secretariat for them to be allowed in. Obviously, they were here to express solidarity with the people of the Philippines, and that is a very moving gesture on their part. I see no reason why they should have been banned. We have received official explanation that only sanctioned actions within the venue would be tolerated. And the act of solidarity where they escorted me and unfurled some small banners was interpreted as an unsanctioned act. And, for me, that is very sad, because these are young people attending their first COP. And that is truly shaking, I would imagine, for them.

AMYGOODMAN: Have you had a chance to talk to Christiana Figueres, the head of the UNFCCC, to—since she personally has banned them?

NADEREV "YEB" SAÑO: I sent correspondence to her office regarding this matter and interceding for these three young people to be allowed back in into the venue.

AMYGOODMAN: And to that other point that Clémence has made about the level of corporate involvement and the corporate sponsorship, it has been growing over the years. Now you actually, in your delegates’ bags, have the corporate logos emblazoned on them. And there’s a climate—what they’re calling a Coal & Climate Summit taking place at the same time here in Warsaw.

NADEREV "YEB" SAÑO: Oh, it is quite troubling for us to see these two meetings taking place at the same time. But I am glad to have heard Christiana Figueres exhort—give an exhortation to the coal industry that they must transform their industry. And we share that sentiment, that the coal industry and the fossil fuel industry must transform, because the single biggest culprit for climate change is the fossil fuel industry, and that is something that we should work together to transform. This is about—if we talk about the industry, this is about moving brown investments into green investments, and that cannot happen unless the industry is willing to do so.

AMYGOODMAN: Two last quick questions. You mentioned four degrees Celsius being catastrophic, very much the direction we’re headed in. What would that look like for the Philippines?

NADEREV "YEB" SAÑO: I can’t imagine that, Amy. That means collapse of our ecosystems, massive droughts, I would say more intense tropical cyclones. And I just can’t imagine how we will secure our food sources and our water sources. That would be more than catastrophic for my country. It’s just unthinkable.

AMYGOODMAN: Clearly, the U.S. Pentagon sees climate change as an enormous threat, putting out a report saying this is the threat of this century. And the reason it’s the, you know, Pentagon, the war department, is seeing that wars could break out over issues, for example, of climate refugees having to leave countries because they’ve been devastated and trying to get into other countries. Do you have a final message for the world, Yeb Saño?

NADEREV "YEB" SAÑO: It’s always hard to encapsulate a single message to the world, as this has become a complex issue. But I just reiterate my appeal to the whole world, that this is something that we can turn around. And I appeal to our common humanity to pursue our common future, because this is not just about us, the current generation, it is about intergenerational responsibility. And I appeal to world leaders. We are not—and to quote, perhaps, an American Native chief, we did not inherit this planet from our ancestors; we are merely borrowing it from future generations.

AMYGOODMAN: And the role of direct action, as you’re taking now on this ninth day of your fast, as these young people took in the summit, even though you’re an official climate negotiator representing your government? The need for direct action?

NADEREV "YEB" SAÑO: The Filipino spirit has always had this heart for the young people, for the youth. Even our national hero, in his most famous writings, he has said that the youth is the hope of our fatherland. And I would say the youth is the hope of this process. The youth is the hope of this planet.

AMYGOODMAN: I want to thank you very much for being with us, Naderev "Yeb" Saño, Philippines climate commission, head of the Philippines climate delegation, on the ninth day of a hunger fast here in Warsaw, Poland, where the COP 19 is taking place—that’s the Conference of Parties, the U.N. Framework on Climate Change Conference. Next year, COP 20 will be in Lima, Peru, and then the binding agreements will take place the next year in Paris.

This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. When we come back, we’ll be joined by a reporter from India who is the one who broke the story of the confidential government documents from the U.S. secretary of state, John Kerry, to the U.S. climate negotiating team, saying "loss and damage" should be rephrased as "blame and liability." Stay with us.

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Tue, 19 Nov 2013 00:00:00 -0500Report Finds Police Worldwide Criminalize Dissent, Assert New Powers in Crackdown on Protestshttp://www.democracynow.org/2013/10/10/report_finds_police_worldwide_criminalize_dissent
tag:democracynow.org,2013-10-10:en/story/a9d9e0 JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We turn now to a major new report detailing the global crackdown on peaceful protests, both through excessive police force and the criminalization of dissent. The report is called &quot;Take Back the Streets: Repression and Criminalization of Protest Around the World.&quot; It was put out by the International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations. The name of the report, &quot;Take Back the Streets,&quot; comes from a police report filed in June 2010, when hundreds of thousands of Canadians took to the streets of Toronto to nonviolently protest the G-20 summit. A senior Toronto police commander responded to the protests by issuing an order to, quote, &quot;take back the streets.&quot; Within a span of 36 hours, over a thousand people—peaceful protesters, journalists, human rights monitors and downtown residents—were arrested and placed in detention.
AMY GOODMAN : According to the report, what happened in Canada is emblematic of government conduct in the face of protest around the world: the tendency to perceive individuals exercising a fundamental democratic right—the right to protest—as a threat requiring a forceful government response. The case studies detailed in this report show how governments have reacted to peaceful protests in the United States, in Israel, Canada, Argentina, Egypt, Hungary, Kenya, South Africa and Britain.
For more, we&#8217;re joined by co-editor of the report, Abby Deshman, a lawyer and program director with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. We&#8217;re also joined by Anthony Romero. He is executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, author of the book In Defense of Our America: The Fight for Civil Liberties in the Age of Terror . And still with us, Hossam Bahgat—he is the founder and executive director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.
We welcome you all to Democracy Now! Abby, talk about the report.
ABBY DESHMAN : Sure. This is a collaboration between multiple domestic human rights and civil liberties organizations, that we&#8217;ve really come together to group our domestic work, group our national work and identify trends in how we feel the governments are responding to democratic dissent and protest in the streets. And, you know, gathering together this number of practitioners to really provide practitioners&#8217; notes shows that there are very disturbing trends. People are taking to the streets across the world, and governments are responding with excessive use of force, criminalization and repression.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, when you say &quot;disturbing trends,&quot; governments have never looked kindly on dissent within their borders or by their own citizens. What do you see as new about what is occurring now? Because I remember years back when we at Democracy Now! covered the Seattle World Trade Organization protests live, there clearly were some new tactics by both the nonviolent protesters as well as the government response.
ABBY DESHMAN : Well, partly what&#8217;s new—I mean, at least for me; I&#8217;m young in this game—but partly what&#8217;s new is massive uprising in the streets. I think we are seeing, in the past three, five years, record numbers of people, in recent memory, taking to the streets. And we are seeing new police tactics—the numbers of arrests, the massive, hundreds of people rounded up at a time. There are new policing weapons: long-range acoustic devices, sonic cannon, excessive amounts of tear gas being used in Egypt. These are trends that are currently surfacing in multiple countries.
AMY GOODMAN : Anthony Romero, talk about the United States.
ANTHONY ROMERO : Well, it&#8217;s important to put the United States in the global context. And normally when we think about protest and freedom of speech, we think that&#8217;s been a right that&#8217;s been well established and well respected. And yet, you point out the difficulties we&#8217;ve seen with the WTO protesters, the protesters with the Occupy movement and, in particular, this case study that we highlight in Puerto Rico, a place where most Americans don&#8217;t think of Puerto Rico as part of the United States, but it is. The Constitution applies. Over four—close to four million American citizens live there. And yet, you have the second-largest police department in the nation, only second to New York City Police Department, and the massive levels of repression and shutdown of—of arrests, of tear-gassing, of beating of students, of labor leaders, the level of impunity that lasted for years, until the ACLU filed a report, lobbied our Justice Department, filed a lawsuit, and then the Justice Department stepped in, only recently, to try to put the Puerto Rico Police Department under better control of rule of law.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And this whole tactic of picking people up en masse and then holding them, supposedly while protests continue, basically pulling them out without any real charges just to get them off the streets?
ANTHONY ROMERO : We saw that New York, right? I mean, that&#8217;s how they—that&#8217;s how they dealt with many of the protests here in New York, especially after the conventions—during the conventions, where they corralled record numbers of people, arrested them in record time, in ways that were just astonishing, held them often incommunicado for 24, 36, 48 hours—a form of preventive detention, if you will.
And I think one of the things we have to bear in mind is like, look, our government is shut down. Our government is not working. People are frustrated. People may take to the streets as an important part of demonstrating their unrest, their unhappiness with our government. And so, how we protect the rights of individuals to protest and to dissent is critically important, especially in our democracy, that&#8217;s so fundamentally broken down and at loggerheads at the moment. The people—it&#8217;s the government of the people, by the people and for the people. And when the government doesn&#8217;t respond to the people, the people have to take the government back.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But to follow up on this, because what the police departments do is they don&#8217;t mind having to deal with lawsuits later on. You know, years later they end up paying these settlements to protesters who had their civil liberties violated, but at that moment they&#8217;re able to effectively shut down the dissent. So, I&#8217;m wondering how can you, as a civil liberties lawyer, find—what ways can the courts be utilized to prevent these kinds of occurrences from repeating themselves over and over again?
ANTHONY ROMERO : I think part of it, you have to—even in cases where they infringe on civil liberties and freedom of speech and expression, you have to sue, to use that as a deterrent for further police departments, to shame them, to cost taxpayers money. We have to work with police departments, those that are open to it, to hear what their concerns are for public safety. They have real concerns around public safety; they can be addressed.
We also have to make sure that we don&#8217;t allow the excessive use of less lethal force. I mean, one of the things we&#8217;ve seen in the reports on Puerto Rico, as much in Egypt and Canada and Argentina, has been the increased use of police of certain weapons, of certain tactics, which they say is less lethal, but they end up in deaths. We have deaths in the arrests in Puerto Rico. We have deaths in Argentina. We certainly have deaths in places like Egypt. And so we have to make sure that we hold the police accountable for those—for those actions.
AMY GOODMAN : And then the issue of surveillance, like our last headline today—
ANTHONY ROMERO : Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN : —this undercover officer in the infamous West Side Highway videotape of the motorcycle gang and the guy with the SUV , that one of these officers, it turns out, was—one of these motorcycle riders was an officer, undercover, and he was undercover in Occupy Wall Street, as well—
ANTHONY ROMERO : Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN : —picked up at Grand Central.
ANTHONY ROMERO : When you look at the fact that it&#8217;s not just what they do at the protest itself, but prior to the protests the surveillance, prior to the protests the infiltration. We have police departments who brazenly brag about sending in undercover cops to pretend they&#8217;re part of the protest movements as a way to derail them or to shape them in the ways they want. All of this, in the context after 9/11, where any activity that disagrees with the government is—often vehemently, is seen as potential terrorist activity or a potential terrorist plot, the powers of the government to use of surveillance, infiltration, the police tactics, they all have to be seen as one part of an effort to shut down and to dispel dissent. We see it. We see the fact that there&#8217;s a quell on public dissent. Muslims are less likely to express themselves now. We hear that from our clients. We hear that from our—some of the litigation we bring. And so, it&#8217;s a very pernicious part that&#8217;s very, very real and often not uncovered until we put out reports like this.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Abby, the Canadian example of the G-20 summit, what most surprised you in terms of as you were unearthing what happened there and the civil liberties violations?
ABBY DESHMAN : Well, actually, how high the police orders went. You know, we thought that this was a coordinated response. We saw that there was consistency, a really defined point in time when the policing turned during the G-20. We then had confirmation that there were orders all the way from the top, that these were not random acts by individual commanders panicking under situations, that these really were decisions that were taken by very senior police leaders to violate not only the rights of citizens, but their own policies and procedures about how to deal with protests, and really that they were taking notes from an international scene where this had happened before. We had not seen this technique in Canada. It was clear that it had happened at previous G-20 summits, and they were importing these policies.
AMY GOODMAN : Hossam Bahgat, we were just talking about the level of repression in Egypt, but fit this into this global context.
HOSSAM BAHGAT : Yes. While Egypt might be an extreme case, of course, because we have sort of crossed the threshold from just the violent repression of protests to mass and deliberate killings, really the trend in Egypt fits with the trend identified by the report in all of these case studies. We see, as Abby and Anthony mentioned, that the mass protests are not, of course, a new phenomenon, but they are taking new shapes. And whether it&#8217;s the Arab uprisings, the protests in Turkey and Brazil, the anti-austerity mass protests in Europe, the Occupy movement here, they are going to continue.
And we see the right to protest publicly and the right to dissent as an essential part of democracy. There is an attempt on the other side, by governments, to reduce the democratic rights of individuals to just voting, to being called in once every few years to cast a vote and then be sent home and leave the governance to the people that have been elected. The people refuse. The people see that, in many countries, the democratic institutions—and we&#8217;re talking in the United States here, but the democratic institutions around the world are not working and are not necessarily reflecting the wills of the people. And the people are going to continue to take their demands, yes, through channels like the media and civil society and labor unions and others, but they are going to go on the street, and they are going to protest publicly. And states need to know that they have a responsibility not just to protect this right, but to even enable people to express these rights, because the only other alternative—the killings that we&#8217;re seeing in Egypt or the killings that even started in Syria as just violence in the face of peaceful protests and turned into civil wars—these are recipes for only pushing the situation into very, very dangerous directions. And the violent response only leads to even violent protests.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, and, Abby, I wanted to ask you—much was made, obviously, in Egypt and during the Arab Spring of the impact of social media and the use of the Internet by dissidents to mobilize, to communicate. In your report, did you dwell into the responses of government officials in terms of how they responded to the change in tactics of the popular movements?
ABBY DESHMAN : Yeah, absolutely. Police do say that they need new tactics because people can mobilize more quickly. Things are going out on Twitter, and then a large crowd forms. Things are very mobile on the ground. But the truth is, in my experience, during the G-20, we knew exactly what was going to happen, because it was on the Internet, it was on social media. The protesters themselves had classified their protests in terms of levels of risk. So I actually am very skeptical of those claims that they need new powers in order to try to police these new forms of protest. We knew exactly what was going to happen during the G-20 protests. They followed that pattern. The police simply weren&#8217;t prepared and then violated rights as their reaction.
AMY GOODMAN : And how should the state deal with violence?
ABBY DESHMAN : Well, the state does need to respond to violence. But I would say the state overresponds to violence, particularly in protests. So, there may be one or two or even 10 or 30 people in a crowd of thousands, tens of thousands, that commit property damage, that commit violent acts. The state often takes that as an authority to abrogate the rights of every single person in that crowd. They need to respond to violence. They need to protect the rights of all the other people in that crowd who are peacefully protesting and exercising their democratic rights. Their role is to facilitate protest, not to find excuses to shut it down.
AMY GOODMAN : What about the U.S. cutting military aid to Egypt, Hossam? How does that play into what the military government does with the protesters? Does it change?
HOSSAM BAHGAT : I mean, in Egypt, especially after the massacres, of course, our position was that there should be investigations, there should be an independent fact finding, and there should be accountability. And until that takes place and until the government also accepts responsibility for these killings, there should be a suspension of the provision of any arms or tools of repression from any country in the world. We&#8217;re not just talking about the U.S. military assistance. And any resumption of the sale of weapons or the provision of weapons or tools of repression to the Egyptian government must be conditioned on accepting the retraining and provision of, you know, new tools for riot control, but that business should not continue just as usual when it comes to Egypt.
Especially when—exactly like Abby said, the problem is now, in all of these demonstrations that we are seeing, in the report, all around the world, there is—there is always a few protesters that are going to use violence. The trend we&#8217;re seeing now is that governments use this to dub the entire protest—20,000, 30,000—as non-peaceful or as violent. And that leads to two things: One, the peaceful participants that are not using violence are, again, lumped together with the others and are deprived of their rights as peaceful protesters; and even those that do engage in stone throwing or other violence are robbed of all their other rights, including their right to life, of course. And the states are just using this as an excuse, sometimes through infiltration by provocateurs into these protests, in order to just remove entire protests outside the realm of protection of law.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I&#8217;d like to get back to Anthony Romero in terms of this whole idea of the Obama administration finally doing something in Egypt to cut off some of the military aid to the—to the coup leaders. How has the Obama administration dealt with the increasing repression by local police on public protesters? Has there been any—any actions by the Justice Department to try to rein this in, or have they basically been supportive?
ANTHONY ROMERO : They&#8217;ve basically been supportive. I mean, to be clear, the ACLU doesn&#8217;t take positions on foreign policy or the U.S. aid to Egypt, but we do look very closely about how our government, federal government, works with state and local governments. And the level of collusion between the federal agents, the FBI , and local police departments has become very troubling, the way they track and the way they monitor and do surveillance on Muslims. So, one of the key cases we have now is in New York City with the New York City Police Department, but it involves the FBI and the federal government. You see it in the immigration context, if you pull the camera back a little further back, where you find the FBI and the DOJ and Department of Homeland Security working with local sheriffs and police.
AMY GOODMAN : You have a case against Arpaio in Arizona.
ANTHONY ROMERO : Oh, it&#8217;s exactly that.
AMY GOODMAN : The sheriff, Joe Arpaio.
ANTHONY ROMERO : The sheriff, Arpaio, who resists a federal order from a federal judge to have a monitor and to have any type of accountability. But Arpaio was created by the policies of Janet Napolitano. I mean, Arpaio is not just a one—
AMY GOODMAN : When she was governor or head of the Department of Homeland Security?
ANTHONY ROMERO : Well, I would say more in the Department of Homeland Security, because it&#8217;s exactly that type of collusion that she encouraged—the 287(g) programs, the Secure Communities programs, that insisted that federal government officials work with local law enforcement officials. Now, Sheriff Arpaio has gone off the farm, but the fact is that there are too many local police departments that are working with the federal government on things like surveillance, on immigration, on dissent, on protest. And so, I think actually part of the responsibility does come from the federal government. JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We turn now to a major new report detailing the global crackdown on peaceful protests, both through excessive police force and the criminalization of dissent. The report is called "Take Back the Streets: Repression and Criminalization of Protest Around the World." It was put out by the International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations. The name of the report, "Take Back the Streets," comes from a police report filed in June 2010, when hundreds of thousands of Canadians took to the streets of Toronto to nonviolently protest the G-20 summit. A senior Toronto police commander responded to the protests by issuing an order to, quote, "take back the streets." Within a span of 36 hours, over a thousand people—peaceful protesters, journalists, human rights monitors and downtown residents—were arrested and placed in detention.

AMYGOODMAN: According to the report, what happened in Canada is emblematic of government conduct in the face of protest around the world: the tendency to perceive individuals exercising a fundamental democratic right—the right to protest—as a threat requiring a forceful government response. The case studies detailed in this report show how governments have reacted to peaceful protests in the United States, in Israel, Canada, Argentina, Egypt, Hungary, Kenya, South Africa and Britain.

For more, we’re joined by co-editor of the report, Abby Deshman, a lawyer and program director with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. We’re also joined by Anthony Romero. He is executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, author of the book In Defense of Our America: The Fight for Civil Liberties in the Age of Terror. And still with us, Hossam Bahgat—he is the founder and executive director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.

We welcome you all to Democracy Now! Abby, talk about the report.

ABBYDESHMAN: Sure. This is a collaboration between multiple domestic human rights and civil liberties organizations, that we’ve really come together to group our domestic work, group our national work and identify trends in how we feel the governments are responding to democratic dissent and protest in the streets. And, you know, gathering together this number of practitioners to really provide practitioners’ notes shows that there are very disturbing trends. People are taking to the streets across the world, and governments are responding with excessive use of force, criminalization and repression.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, when you say "disturbing trends," governments have never looked kindly on dissent within their borders or by their own citizens. What do you see as new about what is occurring now? Because I remember years back when we at Democracy Now! covered the Seattle World Trade Organization protests live, there clearly were some new tactics by both the nonviolent protesters as well as the government response.

ABBYDESHMAN: Well, partly what’s new—I mean, at least for me; I’m young in this game—but partly what’s new is massive uprising in the streets. I think we are seeing, in the past three, five years, record numbers of people, in recent memory, taking to the streets. And we are seeing new police tactics—the numbers of arrests, the massive, hundreds of people rounded up at a time. There are new policing weapons: long-range acoustic devices, sonic cannon, excessive amounts of tear gas being used in Egypt. These are trends that are currently surfacing in multiple countries.

AMYGOODMAN: Anthony Romero, talk about the United States.

ANTHONYROMERO: Well, it’s important to put the United States in the global context. And normally when we think about protest and freedom of speech, we think that’s been a right that’s been well established and well respected. And yet, you point out the difficulties we’ve seen with the WTO protesters, the protesters with the Occupy movement and, in particular, this case study that we highlight in Puerto Rico, a place where most Americans don’t think of Puerto Rico as part of the United States, but it is. The Constitution applies. Over four—close to four million American citizens live there. And yet, you have the second-largest police department in the nation, only second to New York City Police Department, and the massive levels of repression and shutdown of—of arrests, of tear-gassing, of beating of students, of labor leaders, the level of impunity that lasted for years, until the ACLU filed a report, lobbied our Justice Department, filed a lawsuit, and then the Justice Department stepped in, only recently, to try to put the Puerto Rico Police Department under better control of rule of law.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And this whole tactic of picking people up en masse and then holding them, supposedly while protests continue, basically pulling them out without any real charges just to get them off the streets?

ANTHONYROMERO: We saw that New York, right? I mean, that’s how they—that’s how they dealt with many of the protests here in New York, especially after the conventions—during the conventions, where they corralled record numbers of people, arrested them in record time, in ways that were just astonishing, held them often incommunicado for 24, 36, 48 hours—a form of preventive detention, if you will.

And I think one of the things we have to bear in mind is like, look, our government is shut down. Our government is not working. People are frustrated. People may take to the streets as an important part of demonstrating their unrest, their unhappiness with our government. And so, how we protect the rights of individuals to protest and to dissent is critically important, especially in our democracy, that’s so fundamentally broken down and at loggerheads at the moment. The people—it’s the government of the people, by the people and for the people. And when the government doesn’t respond to the people, the people have to take the government back.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But to follow up on this, because what the police departments do is they don’t mind having to deal with lawsuits later on. You know, years later they end up paying these settlements to protesters who had their civil liberties violated, but at that moment they’re able to effectively shut down the dissent. So, I’m wondering how can you, as a civil liberties lawyer, find—what ways can the courts be utilized to prevent these kinds of occurrences from repeating themselves over and over again?

ANTHONYROMERO: I think part of it, you have to—even in cases where they infringe on civil liberties and freedom of speech and expression, you have to sue, to use that as a deterrent for further police departments, to shame them, to cost taxpayers money. We have to work with police departments, those that are open to it, to hear what their concerns are for public safety. They have real concerns around public safety; they can be addressed.

We also have to make sure that we don’t allow the excessive use of less lethal force. I mean, one of the things we’ve seen in the reports on Puerto Rico, as much in Egypt and Canada and Argentina, has been the increased use of police of certain weapons, of certain tactics, which they say is less lethal, but they end up in deaths. We have deaths in the arrests in Puerto Rico. We have deaths in Argentina. We certainly have deaths in places like Egypt. And so we have to make sure that we hold the police accountable for those—for those actions.

AMYGOODMAN: And then the issue of surveillance, like our last headline today—

ANTHONYROMERO: Yeah.

AMYGOODMAN: —this undercover officer in the infamous West Side Highway videotape of the motorcycle gang and the guy with the SUV, that one of these officers, it turns out, was—one of these motorcycle riders was an officer, undercover, and he was undercover in Occupy Wall Street, as well—

ANTHONYROMERO: Yeah.

AMYGOODMAN: —picked up at Grand Central.

ANTHONYROMERO: When you look at the fact that it’s not just what they do at the protest itself, but prior to the protests the surveillance, prior to the protests the infiltration. We have police departments who brazenly brag about sending in undercover cops to pretend they’re part of the protest movements as a way to derail them or to shape them in the ways they want. All of this, in the context after 9/11, where any activity that disagrees with the government is—often vehemently, is seen as potential terrorist activity or a potential terrorist plot, the powers of the government to use of surveillance, infiltration, the police tactics, they all have to be seen as one part of an effort to shut down and to dispel dissent. We see it. We see the fact that there’s a quell on public dissent. Muslims are less likely to express themselves now. We hear that from our clients. We hear that from our—some of the litigation we bring. And so, it’s a very pernicious part that’s very, very real and often not uncovered until we put out reports like this.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Abby, the Canadian example of the G-20 summit, what most surprised you in terms of as you were unearthing what happened there and the civil liberties violations?

ABBYDESHMAN: Well, actually, how high the police orders went. You know, we thought that this was a coordinated response. We saw that there was consistency, a really defined point in time when the policing turned during the G-20. We then had confirmation that there were orders all the way from the top, that these were not random acts by individual commanders panicking under situations, that these really were decisions that were taken by very senior police leaders to violate not only the rights of citizens, but their own policies and procedures about how to deal with protests, and really that they were taking notes from an international scene where this had happened before. We had not seen this technique in Canada. It was clear that it had happened at previous G-20 summits, and they were importing these policies.

AMYGOODMAN: Hossam Bahgat, we were just talking about the level of repression in Egypt, but fit this into this global context.

HOSSAMBAHGAT: Yes. While Egypt might be an extreme case, of course, because we have sort of crossed the threshold from just the violent repression of protests to mass and deliberate killings, really the trend in Egypt fits with the trend identified by the report in all of these case studies. We see, as Abby and Anthony mentioned, that the mass protests are not, of course, a new phenomenon, but they are taking new shapes. And whether it’s the Arab uprisings, the protests in Turkey and Brazil, the anti-austerity mass protests in Europe, the Occupy movement here, they are going to continue.

And we see the right to protest publicly and the right to dissent as an essential part of democracy. There is an attempt on the other side, by governments, to reduce the democratic rights of individuals to just voting, to being called in once every few years to cast a vote and then be sent home and leave the governance to the people that have been elected. The people refuse. The people see that, in many countries, the democratic institutions—and we’re talking in the United States here, but the democratic institutions around the world are not working and are not necessarily reflecting the wills of the people. And the people are going to continue to take their demands, yes, through channels like the media and civil society and labor unions and others, but they are going to go on the street, and they are going to protest publicly. And states need to know that they have a responsibility not just to protect this right, but to even enable people to express these rights, because the only other alternative—the killings that we’re seeing in Egypt or the killings that even started in Syria as just violence in the face of peaceful protests and turned into civil wars—these are recipes for only pushing the situation into very, very dangerous directions. And the violent response only leads to even violent protests.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, and, Abby, I wanted to ask you—much was made, obviously, in Egypt and during the Arab Spring of the impact of social media and the use of the Internet by dissidents to mobilize, to communicate. In your report, did you dwell into the responses of government officials in terms of how they responded to the change in tactics of the popular movements?

ABBYDESHMAN: Yeah, absolutely. Police do say that they need new tactics because people can mobilize more quickly. Things are going out on Twitter, and then a large crowd forms. Things are very mobile on the ground. But the truth is, in my experience, during the G-20, we knew exactly what was going to happen, because it was on the Internet, it was on social media. The protesters themselves had classified their protests in terms of levels of risk. So I actually am very skeptical of those claims that they need new powers in order to try to police these new forms of protest. We knew exactly what was going to happen during the G-20 protests. They followed that pattern. The police simply weren’t prepared and then violated rights as their reaction.

AMYGOODMAN: And how should the state deal with violence?

ABBYDESHMAN: Well, the state does need to respond to violence. But I would say the state overresponds to violence, particularly in protests. So, there may be one or two or even 10 or 30 people in a crowd of thousands, tens of thousands, that commit property damage, that commit violent acts. The state often takes that as an authority to abrogate the rights of every single person in that crowd. They need to respond to violence. They need to protect the rights of all the other people in that crowd who are peacefully protesting and exercising their democratic rights. Their role is to facilitate protest, not to find excuses to shut it down.

AMYGOODMAN: What about the U.S. cutting military aid to Egypt, Hossam? How does that play into what the military government does with the protesters? Does it change?

HOSSAMBAHGAT: I mean, in Egypt, especially after the massacres, of course, our position was that there should be investigations, there should be an independent fact finding, and there should be accountability. And until that takes place and until the government also accepts responsibility for these killings, there should be a suspension of the provision of any arms or tools of repression from any country in the world. We’re not just talking about the U.S. military assistance. And any resumption of the sale of weapons or the provision of weapons or tools of repression to the Egyptian government must be conditioned on accepting the retraining and provision of, you know, new tools for riot control, but that business should not continue just as usual when it comes to Egypt.

Especially when—exactly like Abby said, the problem is now, in all of these demonstrations that we are seeing, in the report, all around the world, there is—there is always a few protesters that are going to use violence. The trend we’re seeing now is that governments use this to dub the entire protest—20,000, 30,000—as non-peaceful or as violent. And that leads to two things: One, the peaceful participants that are not using violence are, again, lumped together with the others and are deprived of their rights as peaceful protesters; and even those that do engage in stone throwing or other violence are robbed of all their other rights, including their right to life, of course. And the states are just using this as an excuse, sometimes through infiltration by provocateurs into these protests, in order to just remove entire protests outside the realm of protection of law.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I’d like to get back to Anthony Romero in terms of this whole idea of the Obama administration finally doing something in Egypt to cut off some of the military aid to the—to the coup leaders. How has the Obama administration dealt with the increasing repression by local police on public protesters? Has there been any—any actions by the Justice Department to try to rein this in, or have they basically been supportive?

ANTHONYROMERO: They’ve basically been supportive. I mean, to be clear, the ACLU doesn’t take positions on foreign policy or the U.S. aid to Egypt, but we do look very closely about how our government, federal government, works with state and local governments. And the level of collusion between the federal agents, the FBI, and local police departments has become very troubling, the way they track and the way they monitor and do surveillance on Muslims. So, one of the key cases we have now is in New York City with the New York City Police Department, but it involves the FBI and the federal government. You see it in the immigration context, if you pull the camera back a little further back, where you find the FBI and the DOJ and Department of Homeland Security working with local sheriffs and police.

AMYGOODMAN: You have a case against Arpaio in Arizona.

ANTHONYROMERO: Oh, it’s exactly that.

AMYGOODMAN: The sheriff, Joe Arpaio.

ANTHONYROMERO: The sheriff, Arpaio, who resists a federal order from a federal judge to have a monitor and to have any type of accountability. But Arpaio was created by the policies of Janet Napolitano. I mean, Arpaio is not just a one—

AMYGOODMAN: When she was governor or head of the Department of Homeland Security?

ANTHONYROMERO: Well, I would say more in the Department of Homeland Security, because it’s exactly that type of collusion that she encouraged—the 287(g) programs, the Secure Communities programs, that insisted that federal government officials work with local law enforcement officials. Now, Sheriff Arpaio has gone off the farm, but the fact is that there are too many local police departments that are working with the federal government on things like surveillance, on immigration, on dissent, on protest. And so, I think actually part of the responsibility does come from the federal government.

More than 160 years ago, the greatest abolitionist in U.S. history, the escaped slave Frederick Douglass, addressed the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society. Douglass asked those gathered, “What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?” His words bear repeating this Independence Day, as the United States asserts unprecedented authority to wage war globally, to spy on everyone, everywhere. Independence Day should serve not as a blind celebration of the government, but as a moment to reflect on the central place in our history of grass-roots democracy movements, which have preserved and expanded the rights proclaimed in the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence: Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Douglass answered his question about the Fourth of July, to those gathered abolitionists: “To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.”

Douglass not only denounced the hypocrisy of slavery in a democracy, but worked diligently to build the abolitionist movement. He fought for women’s suffrage as well. These were movements that have shaped the United States. The civil-rights movement of the 1950s and ‘60s set a permanent example of what can be achieved by grass-roots action, even in the face of systemic, violent repression.

Today, movements continue to shape our society. The trial of George Zimmerman, accused of murdering Trayvon Martin, would not be happening now in Florida were it not for a mass movement. Sparked by the seeming official indifference to the shooting death of yet another young, African-American male, nationwide protests erupted, leading to the appointment of a special prosecutor. A month and a half after Martin was killed, Zimmerman was charged with second-degree murder.

Gay men and lesbians have seen sweeping changes in their legal rights, as same-sex marriage becomes legal in state after state, the U.S. military has dropped its official discrimination against homosexuality, and the federal Defense of Marriage Act was recently judged unconstitutional. Again, undergirding this progress are the decades of movement-building and grass-roots organizing.

In Egypt, the revolution dubbed the Arab Spring continues, with mass protests forcing out President Mohamed Morsi. Where this goes now, with the military in power, is yet to be determined. As my “Democracy Now!” colleague, Sharif Abdel Kouddous, tweeted from the streets of Cairo on the night of the military coup, “After two and a half years, Egypt just went back to square one in its post-Mubarak transition.”

The United States has been for well over two centuries a beacon for those around the world suffering under tyranny. But the U.S. also has been the prime global opponent of grass-roots democratic movements. Amazingly, South African President Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress were not taken off the U.S. terrorist watch list until 2008. When the people of Chile elected Salvador Allende, the U.S. backed a coup against him on Sept. 11, 1973, ushering in the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, who murdered thousands of his own citizens, crushing dissent. Sadly, drone strikes and the U.S.-run prison at Guantanamo are not historical references; they are current crimes committed by our own government.

Now, National Security Agency whistle-blower Edward Snowden, as far as we know, is stranded in the Moscow airport, his U.S passport canceled. He has admitted to revealing a vast, global surveillance regime that has outraged citizens and governments the world over. He joins in his plight imprisoned whistle-blower Bradley Manning, who faces life in prison, being court-martialed now for leaking the largest trove of classified documents in U.S. history. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has now spent more than a year cooped up in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London. These three are central to the exposure of some of the most undemocratic practices of the U.S. government.

More than 100 protests are planned across the U.S. this July Fourth weekend, in opposition to the NSA’s surveillance programs. These protests are part of the continuum of pro-democracy struggles around the world. In closing his Rochester, N.Y., speech, Douglass sounded an optimistic note, saying, “Notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented, of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country.” Grass-roots justice movements are the hope, the beacon, the force that will save this country.

Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 1,000 stations in North America. She is the co-author of “The Silenced Majority,” a New York Times best-seller.

AMYGOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, joined by Norman Finkelstein, scholar, activist, author. He has just published two books. One, Knowing Too Much: Why the American Jewish Romance with Israel Is Coming to an End. His other is called What Gandhi Says: About Nonviolence, Resistance and Courage. What does Gandhi say, Norm Finkelstein?

NORMANFINKELSTEIN: Well, I think the first point is, very few people read Gandhi. They just assume: Gandhi, simple person, simple dresser, skinny, nonviolence, it’s obvious what it means—when, in fact, it’s not obvious at all what nonviolence means for Gandhi. His collected works come—you’ll be surprised, I think, to learn they come to 98 volumes. And that’s about 500 pages per volume. When I first started checking out the works at NYU Library, New York University Library—and NYU is a prominent research library—I think you’ll be surprised also to learn, even though they acquired the collection in 1984, apart from one volume, I was the first person who ever checked out any volume of Gandhi’s 98-volume collected works. I went through about half, 47 volumes, about 25,000 pages.

I was curious to know, what did Gandhi mean by nonviolence, because, you know, on reflection, it’s not so obvious. And the first thing to say about it is Gandhi was not the kind of nonviolent pacifist that, for example, was depicted in Sir Richard Attenborough’s film on Gandhi. Gandhi valued nonviolence, no question about it. But he attached equal value, and in some places you could say more value, to courage. Not just nonviolence, but courage. And he found nothing more despicable than cowardice. It wasn’t violence that, for Gandhi, was the most repellent of human instincts; it was cowardice.

AMYGOODMAN: I want to read a quote, that you quote in What Gandhi Says. Gandhi says, quote, "My nonviolence does not admit of running away from danger and leaving dear ones unprotected. Between violence and cowardly flight, I can only prefer violence to cowardice. I can no more preach nonviolence to a coward than I can tempt a blind man to enjoy healthy scenes. Nonviolence is the summit of bravery. And in my own experience, I have had no difficulty in demonstrating to men trained in the school of violence the superiority of nonviolence. As a coward, which I was for years, I harboured violence. I began to prize nonviolence only when I began to shed cowardice." Norm Finkelstein?

NORMANFINKELSTEIN: Well, you know, it’s a—first of all, it’s a great quote, and there are many quotes like that in Gandhi. And it’s hard sometimes for a person to understand the logic, because a lot of people on the left, they take nonviolence to be sort of wimpish, and they want violence because it’s more, you know, macho and so on and so forth. But Gandhi comes along, and he says, "I think nonviolence takes more courage than violence." So, at the beginning, when I read that, I thought he was just saying it for rhetorical effect. But then, when you read what he actually means, it’s actually sensible. He says, if you believe in violence, and say there’s a war, your enemy, your opposite, has a weapon, and you have your weapon. So, at any rate, yes, you’re risking your life, but you have something to protect yourself: your weapon. And you may survive the encounter. But Gandhi says, "Nonviolence means you’re supposed to march into the line of fire" — and now I’m quoting him — "you’re supposed to march in the line of fire, smilingly and cheerfully, and get yourself blown to bits." That’s what nonviolence means for Gandhi. You’re supposed to get yourself blown to bits. During the nonviolent activities known—the various campaigns, he would say to his followers, "Don’t be a coward and go to jail, because you’re afraid to get killed. Don’t use jail as a pretext to get away from getting killed. You better" — and I’m quoting him — "You better get your skulls cracked. Otherwise, I don’t want to hear from you." So, the irony is, even though Gandhi is attacked by people on the left for being wimpish, the fact is, he set such a high standard. I couldn’t meet it. I mean, I have to be honest about those things. I wish maybe, if I’m thrust into circumstances like that, I’ll find the courage to do it. But sitting here, no, I couldn’t honestly—I couldn’t honestly say I can meet that standard.

I’ll give you an example. A couple of days ago, a friend of mine, my webmaster, Sana Kassem, she sent me a video of a fellow, an American Jew, protesting in the Occupied Territories. And every time the Israelis fire the tear gas, he’s of course running in the opposite direction. Of course. And it’s being filmed. And I’m thinking to myself, but Gandhi says he’s supposed to march—go right into it. And you’re supposed to get killed.

AMYGOODMAN: But, I mean, he was very strategic. He wanted to achieve an end. He didn’t want just to have people killed. He—most importantly was to accomplish what he was driving for: Indian independence.

NORMANFINKELSTEIN: Yeah, well, India independence. But we have to be clear about Gandhi. Sometimes he’s reduced to India independence. But no, he had a whole program of Hindu-Muslim unity, about—and he led many campaigns. I mean, it was news for me also. I’m not pretending as if it’s common knowledge. But Gandhi was very careful. He would only take on public campaigns where, he said, the public already recognized the wrong.

So let’s take one example. In the 1930s, he led a major campaign against alcoholism, which was a big problem in India. And people said, "But Mr. Gandhi, why do you focus on alcoholism? There are many other problems. We have a problem with people who are addicted to racetrack betting. And they’re addicted to the cinema," which, you know, Gandhi thought was a sin. So he said, "Why do you choose" — excuse me — "Why do you choose to focus on alcoholism?" And Gandhi’s answer was very straightforward. He said, "Because Indians already recognize alcoholism is a problem. But they don’t recognize that racetrack betting or the cinema is a problem." And then he said, "It’s wasting time." Gandhi always said, "I’m a man of action. I want to get things done." And so, he wants to start with where public opinion is at. You see, for Gandhi, politics was not about bringing enlightenment to the masses. No, that’s sort of like the Marxist tradition: "We’re the vanguard. We know the science, the science of Marxism" — or in my day, the science of Marxism-Leninism. "We have the science, and we have to bring enlightenment to the benighted masses who suffer from false consciousness and all sorts of other, you know, maladies." Gandhi is not that.

Gandhi is sort of like the Occupy movement. Yes, he’s very much like the Occupy movement, because the Occupy movement started from where people were already at. The Occupy movement comes up with a slogan: "We are the 99 percent." The basic point being, 1 percent are hoarding it all, and 99 percent are getting nothing. And it immediately struck a responsive chord with Americans because that’s how we already felt. They started—what made the slogan so successful is they tapped into a sentiment that was already there. They started from where the consciousness of the American people already was. Nobody had to educate us that the system was unfair. It had been rolling before our eyes for the last several years, or more. And so, what made their movement so successful was, I think, the Gandhian tactic: they found the perfect slogan that embodied the consciousness of the American people at that moment. If they had gone a little further in their slogan, they may have lost the people. And that, I think, was a real—for me, it was a real insight in Gandhi that politics is not about enlightening people. Politics, for Gandhi, to use an expression, is to quicken the conscience of the public to get them to act on what they already know is wrong.

And actually, it worked in my own case. You know, personally, I’m a person of the left, have always been, and always railing against the capitalist system, the unfairness of the distribution of wealth and so forth. When I started to hear about these folks in Zuccotti Park, it resonated for me. But then I heard they’re camping there. I said, "All right, Norm, you’re heading toward 60. You’re not going to Woodstock. You’re past your prime. This is not for you." And so, I just was an observer, a sympathetic observer, but an observer. And then, when I heard about—I’m from Brooklyn, New York, and I heard 800 people were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge. I said, "OK, Norm, it’s time to do something." Now, nobody had to tell me the system was wrong. What people had to do was quicken my conscience to act. And that’s what Gandhian nonviolence is all about, getting people to make the kinds of personal sacrifices which will force the bystanders to say, "OK, I really have to do something now. If they do it, why aren’t I doing it?" And that’s what Gandhianism was about.

But also, as I said, you have to enter a thousand caveats, qualifications, about his commitment to nonviolence, because it was not nonviolence that for him was the ultimate sin. Actually, I’ve read through about half of his—as I said, half of his collected works. He uses—I know it’s a paradox—he uses the most violent language, not against those who commit violence. Actually, he says he was an admirer of Sparta, because he admired the courage of the warrior. And he always used military metaphors. It was "the army of the nonviolent." He was "the general." He always used martial metaphors. But he said—as I said, he reserved his most violent language for cowards. He literally says they don’t deserve to live. A coward does not have a right to live.

There is where he gets—you know, Gandhi was very strict about nonviolence. He had to be nonviolent in thought, word and deed. But you could say he sort of verges on violence—violent language, thought and word when it comes to cowards. And I have to say also, probably in his classification, I would rate a coward. I mean, I’m not proud to say that. But he had such a high standard of what political commitment was about and the sacrifices you were obliged to make, if you want to be morally consistent with your values, it’s a tough act.

AMYGOODMAN: A thumbnail sketch of who Gandhi was, since you’ve studied him. For people who, as you said, have a very sort of scant—a sort of caricature of who he is, explain where he was born, why he came to adopt the views he did.

NORMANFINKELSTEIN: Well, I’ll tell you—I mean, I’d like to always be honest. I didn’t look too closely at the biographical data. I mean, I know as much as, you might say, a Wikipedia entry might say. I was more interested in the theory. I was interested—I began the whole project because I said to myself, well, you know, India under Gandhi—under Gandhi’s influence, it faced the same sort of challenges as Israel-Palestine. First of all, Gandhi wanted to end an occupation, like the Palestinians. Second of all, Gandhi was confronting the great power of his day, the superpower of his day, namely the British Empire. Similarly, the Palestinians have to face a formidable regional power, namely Israel, and right behind it, the superpower of our day, namely the United States. And thirdly, the Palestinians don’t really have a military option. The only way they’re going to succeed is if they try these tactics that Gandhi pioneered in India. And so, I felt, for those three reasons—trying to end an occupation, facing a superpower, and the only tactical option is really nonviolence—it would be interesting to see, OK, how did Gandhi reason the whole thing through? And that was my impetus. I don’t know the history better than sort of a generalist, or, for that matter, Gandhi’s personal biography.

He was a—you know, there were—many things about Gandhi were very eccentric and also very autocratic. You know, Gandhi was, "you do it my way, or go the highway." He was very, very autocratic. And he said that what he decides to do is not based on reason. Reason comes later. It’s what his inner voice tells him to do. Well, obviously you can’t rationally argue with an inner voice. Either you agree, or you don’t agree and you leave. I did have a good opportunity when I was in South Africa a couple of years ago. I went to see his granddaughter, Ela Gandhi. And I remember her saying to me, and it just came out in conversation, she said he had great confidence in that inner voice, which is—you know, nowadays we would say—we would call it, he had good political instincts. But you can’t argue with an instinct. Instinct tells you, "Do this at this moment." But you can’t really argue with it. And so, it was very hard. You know, reading him, there’s that streak of autocratic—that autocratic streak, which is very unpleasant.

On the other hand—and, you know, I sort of get emotional—you can’t but admire that man. I mean, the kind of moral force he had, it was just terrifying at the end, in '47, you know, Egypt—excuse me, Israel—ah, India erupts in this horrible bloodletting, the Partition. They estimate like a million people were killed. You go into streets of Calcutta, literally 10,000 bodies in the street. All the blood is literally flowing in the streets. And Gandhi comes in, and the first thing he does is he goes to the Hindu temples. Now remember, this is where the intercommunal hatred has reached a fever pitch. And he goes into the Hindu temples, and he insists, "I'm going to begin each religious—each service, prayer service—I’m going to begin it with a passage from the Koran." The Hindus were going mad. "What do you mean, the Koran?" And he is adamant. "I am beginning with the Koran." And there would be the hecklers and the people who were worse than hecklers. He would stay with them in the temple the whole night. He said, "I’m going to sit and reason it through with you why I’m beginning with the Koran." And when he went on the hunger strikes during the terrible bloodletting, you know, to his credit—you can take it away—they stopped. OK, it’s true they stopped killing each other temporarily. You can even say they stopped briefly. But for the Mahatma, for Gandhiji, they stopped. You know, that’s—it’s very impressive. Of course, the downside is, that kind of moral power came and went with Gandhi. There was nobody else commanding that kind of moral authority. But it was a very impressive show. It really was. And it gets me a little bit angry when people on the left, who I like, you know, and they’re very harsh on Gandhi. No, there were a lot of problems, no question about it. But there, there went a man.

AMYGOODMAN: Author, scholar, activist, Norman Finkelstein. He has just written the book, out this week, What Gandhi Says: About Nonviolence, Resistance and Courage.

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Tue, 05 Jun 2012 16:48:00 -0400Part 3: Norman Finkelstein on What Gandhi Says About Nonviolence, Resistance and Courage After an exhaustive study of Mahatma Gandhi&#8217;s works, scholar and activist Norman Finkelstein has written a new book about the principles of nonviolent resistance from the Indian struggle for independence to Tahrir Square and Zuccotti Park. He says Gandhi found &quot;nothing more despicable than cowardice,&quot; and argued that nonviolence does not mean running away from danger. In fact, Gandhi argued that fighting a war with weapons takes less courage than nonviolent resistance in which &quot;you&#8217;re supposed to march into the line of fire, smilingly and cheerfully, and get yourself blown to bits.&quot; Finkelstein&#8217;s new book is titled What Gandhi Says: About Nonviolence, Resistance and Courage. Click here to see part 1 and part 2 of this interview.
AMY GOODMAN : This is Democracy Now! , democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report . I&#8217;m Amy Goodman, joined by Norman Finkelstein, scholar, activist, author. He has just published two books. One, Knowing Too Much: Why the American Jewish Romance with Israel Is Coming to an End . His other is called What Gandhi Says: About Nonviolence, Resistance and Courage . What does Gandhi say, Norm Finkelstein?
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN : Well, I think the first point is, very few people read Gandhi. They just assume: Gandhi, simple person, simple dresser, skinny, nonviolence, it&#8217;s obvious what it means—when, in fact, it&#8217;s not obvious at all what nonviolence means for Gandhi. His collected works come—you&#8217;ll be surprised, I think, to learn they come to 98 volumes. And that&#8217;s about 500 pages per volume. When I first started checking out the works at NYU Library, New York University Library—and NYU is a prominent research library—I think you&#8217;ll be surprised also to learn, even though they acquired the collection in 1984, apart from one volume, I was the first person who ever checked out any volume of Gandhi&#8217;s 98-volume collected works. I went through about half, 47 volumes, about 25,000 pages.
I was curious to know, what did Gandhi mean by nonviolence, because, you know, on reflection, it&#8217;s not so obvious. And the first thing to say about it is Gandhi was not the kind of nonviolent pacifist that, for example, was depicted in Sir Richard Attenborough&#8217;s film on Gandhi. Gandhi valued nonviolence, no question about it. But he attached equal value, and in some places you could say more value, to courage. Not just nonviolence, but courage. And he found nothing more despicable than cowardice. It wasn&#8217;t violence that, for Gandhi, was the most repellent of human instincts; it was cowardice.
AMY GOODMAN : I want to read a quote, that you quote in What Gandhi Says . Gandhi says, quote, &quot;My nonviolence does not admit of running away from danger and leaving dear ones unprotected. Between violence and cowardly flight, I can only prefer violence to cowardice. I can no more preach nonviolence to a coward than I can tempt a blind man to enjoy healthy scenes. Nonviolence is the summit of bravery. And in my own experience, I have had no difficulty in demonstrating to men trained in the school of violence the superiority of nonviolence. As a coward, which I was for years, I harboured violence. I began to prize nonviolence only when I began to shed cowardice.&quot; Norm Finkelstein?
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN : Well, you know, it&#8217;s a—first of all, it&#8217;s a great quote, and there are many quotes like that in Gandhi. And it&#8217;s hard sometimes for a person to understand the logic, because a lot of people on the left, they take nonviolence to be sort of wimpish, and they want violence because it&#8217;s more, you know, macho and so on and so forth. But Gandhi comes along, and he says, &quot;I think nonviolence takes more courage than violence.&quot; So, at the beginning, when I read that, I thought he was just saying it for rhetorical effect. But then, when you read what he actually means, it&#8217;s actually sensible. He says, if you believe in violence, and say there&#8217;s a war, your enemy, your opposite, has a weapon, and you have your weapon. So, at any rate, yes, you&#8217;re risking your life, but you have something to protect yourself: your weapon. And you may survive the encounter. But Gandhi says, &quot;Nonviolence means you&#8217;re supposed to march into the line of fire&quot; — and now I&#8217;m quoting him — &quot;you&#8217;re supposed to march in the line of fire, smilingly and cheerfully, and get yourself blown to bits.&quot; That&#8217;s what nonviolence means for Gandhi. You&#8217;re supposed to get yourself blown to bits. During the nonviolent activities known—the various campaigns, he would say to his followers, &quot;Don&#8217;t be a coward and go to jail, because you&#8217;re afraid to get killed. Don&#8217;t use jail as a pretext to get away from getting killed. You better&quot; — and I&#8217;m quoting him — &quot;You better get your skulls cracked. Otherwise, I don&#8217;t want to hear from you.&quot; So, the irony is, even though Gandhi is attacked by people on the left for being wimpish, the fact is, he set such a high standard. I couldn&#8217;t meet it. I mean, I have to be honest about those things. I wish maybe, if I&#8217;m thrust into circumstances like that, I&#8217;ll find the courage to do it. But sitting here, no, I couldn&#8217;t honestly—I couldn&#8217;t honestly say I can meet that standard.
I&#8217;ll give you an example. A couple of days ago, a friend of mine, my webmaster, Sana Kassem, she sent me a video of a fellow, an American Jew, protesting in the Occupied Territories. And every time the Israelis fire the tear gas, he&#8217;s of course running in the opposite direction. Of course. And it&#8217;s being filmed. And I&#8217;m thinking to myself, but Gandhi says he&#8217;s supposed to march—go right into it. And you&#8217;re supposed to get killed.
AMY GOODMAN : But, I mean, he was very strategic. He wanted to achieve an end. He didn&#8217;t want just to have people killed. He—most importantly was to accomplish what he was driving for: Indian independence.
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN : Yeah, well, India independence. But we have to be clear about Gandhi. Sometimes he&#8217;s reduced to India independence. But no, he had a whole program of Hindu-Muslim unity, about—and he led many campaigns. I mean, it was news for me also. I&#8217;m not pretending as if it&#8217;s common knowledge. But Gandhi was very careful. He would only take on public campaigns where, he said, the public already recognized the wrong.
So let&#8217;s take one example. In the 1930s, he led a major campaign against alcoholism, which was a big problem in India. And people said, &quot;But Mr. Gandhi, why do you focus on alcoholism? There are many other problems. We have a problem with people who are addicted to racetrack betting. And they&#8217;re addicted to the cinema,&quot; which, you know, Gandhi thought was a sin. So he said, &quot;Why do you choose&quot; — excuse me — &quot;Why do you choose to focus on alcoholism?&quot; And Gandhi&#8217;s answer was very straightforward. He said, &quot;Because Indians already recognize alcoholism is a problem. But they don&#8217;t recognize that racetrack betting or the cinema is a problem.&quot; And then he said, &quot;It&#8217;s wasting time.&quot; Gandhi always said, &quot;I&#8217;m a man of action. I want to get things done.&quot; And so, he wants to start with where public opinion is at. You see, for Gandhi, politics was not about bringing enlightenment to the masses. No, that&#8217;s sort of like the Marxist tradition: &quot;We&#8217;re the vanguard. We know the science, the science of Marxism&quot; — or in my day, the science of Marxism-Leninism. &quot;We have the science, and we have to bring enlightenment to the benighted masses who suffer from false consciousness and all sorts of other, you know, maladies.&quot; Gandhi is not that.
Gandhi is sort of like the Occupy movement. Yes, he&#8217;s very much like the Occupy movement, because the Occupy movement started from where people were already at. The Occupy movement comes up with a slogan: &quot;We are the 99 percent.&quot; The basic point being, 1 percent are hoarding it all, and 99 percent are getting nothing. And it immediately struck a responsive chord with Americans because that&#8217;s how we already felt. They started—what made the slogan so successful is they tapped into a sentiment that was already there. They started from where the consciousness of the American people already was. Nobody had to educate us that the system was unfair. It had been rolling before our eyes for the last several years, or more. And so, what made their movement so successful was, I think, the Gandhian tactic: they found the perfect slogan that embodied the consciousness of the American people at that moment. If they had gone a little further in their slogan, they may have lost the people. And that, I think, was a real—for me, it was a real insight in Gandhi that politics is not about enlightening people. Politics, for Gandhi, to use an expression, is to quicken the conscience of the public to get them to act on what they already know is wrong.
And actually, it worked in my own case. You know, personally, I&#8217;m a person of the left, have always been, and always railing against the capitalist system, the unfairness of the distribution of wealth and so forth. When I started to hear about these folks in Zuccotti Park, it resonated for me. But then I heard they&#8217;re camping there. I said, &quot;All right, Norm, you&#8217;re heading toward 60. You&#8217;re not going to Woodstock. You&#8217;re past your prime. This is not for you.&quot; And so, I just was an observer, a sympathetic observer, but an observer. And then, when I heard about—I&#8217;m from Brooklyn, New York, and I heard 800 people were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge. I said, &quot;OK, Norm, it&#8217;s time to do something.&quot; Now, nobody had to tell me the system was wrong. What people had to do was quicken my conscience to act. And that&#8217;s what Gandhian nonviolence is all about, getting people to make the kinds of personal sacrifices which will force the bystanders to say, &quot;OK, I really have to do something now. If they do it, why aren&#8217;t I doing it?&quot; And that&#8217;s what Gandhianism was about.
But also, as I said, you have to enter a thousand caveats, qualifications, about his commitment to nonviolence, because it was not nonviolence that for him was the ultimate sin. Actually, I&#8217;ve read through about half of his—as I said, half of his collected works. He uses—I know it&#8217;s a paradox—he uses the most violent language, not against those who commit violence. Actually, he says he was an admirer of Sparta, because he admired the courage of the warrior. And he always used military metaphors. It was &quot;the army of the nonviolent.&quot; He was &quot;the general.&quot; He always used martial metaphors. But he said—as I said, he reserved his most violent language for cowards. He literally says they don&#8217;t deserve to live. A coward does not have a right to live.
There is where he gets—you know, Gandhi was very strict about nonviolence. He had to be nonviolent in thought, word and deed. But you could say he sort of verges on violence—violent language, thought and word when it comes to cowards. And I have to say also, probably in his classification, I would rate a coward. I mean, I&#8217;m not proud to say that. But he had such a high standard of what political commitment was about and the sacrifices you were obliged to make, if you want to be morally consistent with your values, it&#8217;s a tough act.
AMY GOODMAN : A thumbnail sketch of who Gandhi was, since you&#8217;ve studied him. For people who, as you said, have a very sort of scant—a sort of caricature of who he is, explain where he was born, why he came to adopt the views he did.
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN : Well, I&#8217;ll tell you—I mean, I&#8217;d like to always be honest. I didn&#8217;t look too closely at the biographical data. I mean, I know as much as, you might say, a Wikipedia entry might say. I was more interested in the theory. I was interested—I began the whole project because I said to myself, well, you know, India under Gandhi—under Gandhi&#8217;s influence, it faced the same sort of challenges as Israel-Palestine. First of all, Gandhi wanted to end an occupation, like the Palestinians. Second of all, Gandhi was confronting the great power of his day, the superpower of his day, namely the British Empire. Similarly, the Palestinians have to face a formidable regional power, namely Israel, and right behind it, the superpower of our day, namely the United States. And thirdly, the Palestinians don&#8217;t really have a military option. The only way they&#8217;re going to succeed is if they try these tactics that Gandhi pioneered in India. And so, I felt, for those three reasons—trying to end an occupation, facing a superpower, and the only tactical option is really nonviolence—it would be interesting to see, OK, how did Gandhi reason the whole thing through? And that was my impetus. I don&#8217;t know the history better than sort of a generalist, or, for that matter, Gandhi&#8217;s personal biography.
He was a—you know, there were—many things about Gandhi were very eccentric and also very autocratic. You know, Gandhi was, &quot;you do it my way, or go the highway.&quot; He was very, very autocratic. And he said that what he decides to do is not based on reason. Reason comes later. It&#8217;s what his inner voice tells him to do. Well, obviously you can&#8217;t rationally argue with an inner voice. Either you agree, or you don&#8217;t agree and you leave. I did have a good opportunity when I was in South Africa a couple of years ago. I went to see his granddaughter, Ela Gandhi. And I remember her saying to me, and it just came out in conversation, she said he had great confidence in that inner voice, which is—you know, nowadays we would say—we would call it, he had good political instincts. But you can&#8217;t argue with an instinct. Instinct tells you, &quot;Do this at this moment.&quot; But you can&#8217;t really argue with it. And so, it was very hard. You know, reading him, there&#8217;s that streak of autocratic—that autocratic streak, which is very unpleasant.
On the other hand—and, you know, I sort of get emotional—you can&#8217;t but admire that man. I mean, the kind of moral force he had, it was just terrifying at the end, in &#39;47, you know, Egypt—excuse me, Israel—ah, India erupts in this horrible bloodletting, the Partition. They estimate like a million people were killed. You go into streets of Calcutta, literally 10,000 bodies in the street. All the blood is literally flowing in the streets. And Gandhi comes in, and the first thing he does is he goes to the Hindu temples. Now remember, this is where the intercommunal hatred has reached a fever pitch. And he goes into the Hindu temples, and he insists, &quot;I&#39;m going to begin each religious—each service, prayer service—I&#8217;m going to begin it with a passage from the Koran.&quot; The Hindus were going mad. &quot;What do you mean, the Koran?&quot; And he is adamant. &quot;I am beginning with the Koran.&quot; And there would be the hecklers and the people who were worse than hecklers. He would stay with them in the temple the whole night. He said, &quot;I&#8217;m going to sit and reason it through with you why I&#8217;m beginning with the Koran.&quot; And when he went on the hunger strikes during the terrible bloodletting, you know, to his credit—you can take it away—they stopped. OK, it&#8217;s true they stopped killing each other temporarily. You can even say they stopped briefly. But for the Mahatma, for Gandhiji, they stopped. You know, that&#8217;s—it&#8217;s very impressive. Of course, the downside is, that kind of moral power came and went with Gandhi. There was nobody else commanding that kind of moral authority. But it was a very impressive show. It really was. And it gets me a little bit angry when people on the left, who I like, you know, and they&#8217;re very harsh on Gandhi. No, there were a lot of problems, no question about it. But there, there went a man.
AMY GOODMAN : Author, scholar, activist, Norman Finkelstein. He has just written the book, out this week, What Gandhi Says: About Nonviolence, Resistance and Courage . nonadulttv-gDemocracy Now!NewsPart 3: Norman Finkelstein on What Gandhi Says About Nonviolence, Resistance and Courage After an exhaustive study of Mahatma Gandhi&#8217;s works, scholar and activist Norman Finkelstein has written a new book about the principles of nonviolent resistance from the Indian struggle for independence to Tahrir Square and Zuccotti Park. He says Gandhi found &quot;nothing more despicable than cowardice,&quot; and argued that nonviolence does not mean running away from danger. In fact, Gandhi argued that fighting a war with weapons takes less courage than nonviolent resistance in which &quot;you&#8217;re supposed to march into the line of fire, smilingly and cheerfully, and get yourself blown to bits.&quot; Finkelstein&#8217;s new book is titled What Gandhi Says: About Nonviolence, Resistance and Courage. Click here to see part 1 and part 2 of this interview.
AMY GOODMAN : This is Democracy Now! , democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report . I&#8217;m Amy Goodman, joined by Norman Finkelstein, scholar, activist, author. He has just published two books. One, Knowing Too Much: Why the American Jewish Romance with Israel Is Coming to an End . His other is called What Gandhi Says: About Nonviolence, Resistance and Courage . What does Gandhi say, Norm Finkelstein?
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN : Well, I think the first point is, very few people read Gandhi. They just assume: Gandhi, simple person, simple dresser, skinny, nonviolence, it&#8217;s obvious what it means—when, in fact, it&#8217;s not obvious at all what nonviolence means for Gandhi. His collected works come—you&#8217;ll be surprised, I think, to learn they come to 98 volumes. And that&#8217;s about 500 pages per volume. When I first started checking out the works at NYU Library, New York University Library—and NYU is a prominent research library—I think you&#8217;ll be surprised also to learn, even though they acquired the collection in 1984, apart from one volume, I was the first person who ever checked out any volume of Gandhi&#8217;s 98-volume collected works. I went through about half, 47 volumes, about 25,000 pages.
I was curious to know, what did Gandhi mean by nonviolence, because, you know, on reflection, it&#8217;s not so obvious. And the first thing to say about it is Gandhi was not the kind of nonviolent pacifist that, for example, was depicted in Sir Richard Attenborough&#8217;s film on Gandhi. Gandhi valued nonviolence, no question about it. But he attached equal value, and in some places you could say more value, to courage. Not just nonviolence, but courage. And he found nothing more despicable than cowardice. It wasn&#8217;t violence that, for Gandhi, was the most repellent of human instincts; it was cowardice.
AMY GOODMAN : I want to read a quote, that you quote in What Gandhi Says . Gandhi says, quote, &quot;My nonviolence does not admit of running away from danger and leaving dear ones unprotected. Between violence and cowardly flight, I can only prefer violence to cowardice. I can no more preach nonviolence to a coward than I can tempt a blind man to enjoy healthy scenes. Nonviolence is the summit of bravery. And in my own experience, I have had no difficulty in demonstrating to men trained in the school of violence the superiority of nonviolence. As a coward, which I was for years, I harboured violence. I began to prize nonviolence only when I began to shed cowardice.&quot; Norm Finkelstein?
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN : Well, you know, it&#8217;s a—first of all, it&#8217;s a great quote, and there are many quotes like that in Gandhi. And it&#8217;s hard sometimes for a person to understand the logic, because a lot of people on the left, they take nonviolence to be sort of wimpish, and they want violence because it&#8217;s more, you know, macho and so on and so forth. But Gandhi comes along, and he says, &quot;I think nonviolence takes more courage than violence.&quot; So, at the beginning, when I read that, I thought he was just saying it for rhetorical effect. But then, when you read what he actually means, it&#8217;s actually sensible. He says, if you believe in violence, and say there&#8217;s a war, your enemy, your opposite, has a weapon, and you have your weapon. So, at any rate, yes, you&#8217;re risking your life, but you have something to protect yourself: your weapon. And you may survive the encounter. But Gandhi says, &quot;Nonviolence means you&#8217;re supposed to march into the line of fire&quot; — and now I&#8217;m quoting him — &quot;you&#8217;re supposed to march in the line of fire, smilingly and cheerfully, and get yourself blown to bits.&quot; That&#8217;s what nonviolence means for Gandhi. You&#8217;re supposed to get yourself blown to bits. During the nonviolent activities known—the various campaigns, he would say to his followers, &quot;Don&#8217;t be a coward and go to jail, because you&#8217;re afraid to get killed. Don&#8217;t use jail as a pretext to get away from getting killed. You better&quot; — and I&#8217;m quoting him — &quot;You better get your skulls cracked. Otherwise, I don&#8217;t want to hear from you.&quot; So, the irony is, even though Gandhi is attacked by people on the left for being wimpish, the fact is, he set such a high standard. I couldn&#8217;t meet it. I mean, I have to be honest about those things. I wish maybe, if I&#8217;m thrust into circumstances like that, I&#8217;ll find the courage to do it. But sitting here, no, I couldn&#8217;t honestly—I couldn&#8217;t honestly say I can meet that standard.
I&#8217;ll give you an example. A couple of days ago, a friend of mine, my webmaster, Sana Kassem, she sent me a video of a fellow, an American Jew, protesting in the Occupied Territories. And every time the Israelis fire the tear gas, he&#8217;s of course running in the opposite direction. Of course. And it&#8217;s being filmed. And I&#8217;m thinking to myself, but Gandhi says he&#8217;s supposed to march—go right into it. And you&#8217;re supposed to get killed.
AMY GOODMAN : But, I mean, he was very strategic. He wanted to achieve an end. He didn&#8217;t want just to have people killed. He—most importantly was to accomplish what he was driving for: Indian independence.
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN : Yeah, well, India independence. But we have to be clear about Gandhi. Sometimes he&#8217;s reduced to India independence. But no, he had a whole program of Hindu-Muslim unity, about—and he led many campaigns. I mean, it was news for me also. I&#8217;m not pretending as if it&#8217;s common knowledge. But Gandhi was very careful. He would only take on public campaigns where, he said, the public already recognized the wrong.
So let&#8217;s take one example. In the 1930s, he led a major campaign against alcoholism, which was a big problem in India. And people said, &quot;But Mr. Gandhi, why do you focus on alcoholism? There are many other problems. We have a problem with people who are addicted to racetrack betting. And they&#8217;re addicted to the cinema,&quot; which, you know, Gandhi thought was a sin. So he said, &quot;Why do you choose&quot; — excuse me — &quot;Why do you choose to focus on alcoholism?&quot; And Gandhi&#8217;s answer was very straightforward. He said, &quot;Because Indians already recognize alcoholism is a problem. But they don&#8217;t recognize that racetrack betting or the cinema is a problem.&quot; And then he said, &quot;It&#8217;s wasting time.&quot; Gandhi always said, &quot;I&#8217;m a man of action. I want to get things done.&quot; And so, he wants to start with where public opinion is at. You see, for Gandhi, politics was not about bringing enlightenment to the masses. No, that&#8217;s sort of like the Marxist tradition: &quot;We&#8217;re the vanguard. We know the science, the science of Marxism&quot; — or in my day, the science of Marxism-Leninism. &quot;We have the science, and we have to bring enlightenment to the benighted masses who suffer from false consciousness and all sorts of other, you know, maladies.&quot; Gandhi is not that.
Gandhi is sort of like the Occupy movement. Yes, he&#8217;s very much like the Occupy movement, because the Occupy movement started from where people were already at. The Occupy movement comes up with a slogan: &quot;We are the 99 percent.&quot; The basic point being, 1 percent are hoarding it all, and 99 percent are getting nothing. And it immediately struck a responsive chord with Americans because that&#8217;s how we already felt. They started—what made the slogan so successful is they tapped into a sentiment that was already there. They started from where the consciousness of the American people already was. Nobody had to educate us that the system was unfair. It had been rolling before our eyes for the last several years, or more. And so, what made their movement so successful was, I think, the Gandhian tactic: they found the perfect slogan that embodied the consciousness of the American people at that moment. If they had gone a little further in their slogan, they may have lost the people. And that, I think, was a real—for me, it was a real insight in Gandhi that politics is not about enlightening people. Politics, for Gandhi, to use an expression, is to quicken the conscience of the public to get them to act on what they already know is wrong.
And actually, it worked in my own case. You know, personally, I&#8217;m a person of the left, have always been, and always railing against the capitalist system, the unfairness of the distribution of wealth and so forth. When I started to hear about these folks in Zuccotti Park, it resonated for me. But then I heard they&#8217;re camping there. I said, &quot;All right, Norm, you&#8217;re heading toward 60. You&#8217;re not going to Woodstock. You&#8217;re past your prime. This is not for you.&quot; And so, I just was an observer, a sympathetic observer, but an observer. And then, when I heard about—I&#8217;m from Brooklyn, New York, and I heard 800 people were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge. I said, &quot;OK, Norm, it&#8217;s time to do something.&quot; Now, nobody had to tell me the system was wrong. What people had to do was quicken my conscience to act. And that&#8217;s what Gandhian nonviolence is all about, getting people to make the kinds of personal sacrifices which will force the bystanders to say, &quot;OK, I really have to do something now. If they do it, why aren&#8217;t I doing it?&quot; And that&#8217;s what Gandhianism was about.
But also, as I said, you have to enter a thousand caveats, qualifications, about his commitment to nonviolence, because it was not nonviolence that for him was the ultimate sin. Actually, I&#8217;ve read through about half of his—as I said, half of his collected works. He uses—I know it&#8217;s a paradox—he uses the most violent language, not against those who commit violence. Actually, he says he was an admirer of Sparta, because he admired the courage of the warrior. And he always used military metaphors. It was &quot;the army of the nonviolent.&quot; He was &quot;the general.&quot; He always used martial metaphors. But he said—as I said, he reserved his most violent language for cowards. He literally says they don&#8217;t deserve to live. A coward does not have a right to live.
There is where he gets—you know, Gandhi was very strict about nonviolence. He had to be nonviolent in thought, word and deed. But you could say he sort of verges on violence—violent language, thought and word when it comes to cowards. And I have to say also, probably in his classification, I would rate a coward. I mean, I&#8217;m not proud to say that. But he had such a high standard of what political commitment was about and the sacrifices you were obliged to make, if you want to be morally consistent with your values, it&#8217;s a tough act.
AMY GOODMAN : A thumbnail sketch of who Gandhi was, since you&#8217;ve studied him. For people who, as you said, have a very sort of scant—a sort of caricature of who he is, explain where he was born, why he came to adopt the views he did.
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN : Well, I&#8217;ll tell you—I mean, I&#8217;d like to always be honest. I didn&#8217;t look too closely at the biographical data. I mean, I know as much as, you might say, a Wikipedia entry might say. I was more interested in the theory. I was interested—I began the whole project because I said to myself, well, you know, India under Gandhi—under Gandhi&#8217;s influence, it faced the same sort of challenges as Israel-Palestine. First of all, Gandhi wanted to end an occupation, like the Palestinians. Second of all, Gandhi was confronting the great power of his day, the superpower of his day, namely the British Empire. Similarly, the Palestinians have to face a formidable regional power, namely Israel, and right behind it, the superpower of our day, namely the United States. And thirdly, the Palestinians don&#8217;t really have a military option. The only way they&#8217;re going to succeed is if they try these tactics that Gandhi pioneered in India. And so, I felt, for those three reasons—trying to end an occupation, facing a superpower, and the only tactical option is really nonviolence—it would be interesting to see, OK, how did Gandhi reason the whole thing through? And that was my impetus. I don&#8217;t know the history better than sort of a generalist, or, for that matter, Gandhi&#8217;s personal biography.
He was a—you know, there were—many things about Gandhi were very eccentric and also very autocratic. You know, Gandhi was, &quot;you do it my way, or go the highway.&quot; He was very, very autocratic. And he said that what he decides to do is not based on reason. Reason comes later. It&#8217;s what his inner voice tells him to do. Well, obviously you can&#8217;t rationally argue with an inner voice. Either you agree, or you don&#8217;t agree and you leave. I did have a good opportunity when I was in South Africa a couple of years ago. I went to see his granddaughter, Ela Gandhi. And I remember her saying to me, and it just came out in conversation, she said he had great confidence in that inner voice, which is—you know, nowadays we would say—we would call it, he had good political instincts. But you can&#8217;t argue with an instinct. Instinct tells you, &quot;Do this at this moment.&quot; But you can&#8217;t really argue with it. And so, it was very hard. You know, reading him, there&#8217;s that streak of autocratic—that autocratic streak, which is very unpleasant.
On the other hand—and, you know, I sort of get emotional—you can&#8217;t but admire that man. I mean, the kind of moral force he had, it was just terrifying at the end, in &#39;47, you know, Egypt—excuse me, Israel—ah, India erupts in this horrible bloodletting, the Partition. They estimate like a million people were killed. You go into streets of Calcutta, literally 10,000 bodies in the street. All the blood is literally flowing in the streets. And Gandhi comes in, and the first thing he does is he goes to the Hindu temples. Now remember, this is where the intercommunal hatred has reached a fever pitch. And he goes into the Hindu temples, and he insists, &quot;I&#39;m going to begin each religious—each service, prayer service—I&#8217;m going to begin it with a passage from the Koran.&quot; The Hindus were going mad. &quot;What do you mean, the Koran?&quot; And he is adamant. &quot;I am beginning with the Koran.&quot; And there would be the hecklers and the people who were worse than hecklers. He would stay with them in the temple the whole night. He said, &quot;I&#8217;m going to sit and reason it through with you why I&#8217;m beginning with the Koran.&quot; And when he went on the hunger strikes during the terrible bloodletting, you know, to his credit—you can take it away—they stopped. OK, it&#8217;s true they stopped killing each other temporarily. You can even say they stopped briefly. But for the Mahatma, for Gandhiji, they stopped. You know, that&#8217;s—it&#8217;s very impressive. Of course, the downside is, that kind of moral power came and went with Gandhi. There was nobody else commanding that kind of moral authority. But it was a very impressive show. It really was. And it gets me a little bit angry when people on the left, who I like, you know, and they&#8217;re very harsh on Gandhi. No, there were a lot of problems, no question about it. But there, there went a man.
AMY GOODMAN : Author, scholar, activist, Norman Finkelstein. He has just written the book, out this week, What Gandhi Says: About Nonviolence, Resistance and Courage . nonadulttv-gDemocracy Now!NewsFrom Coal to Foreclosures, Bank of America Faces Protest at Shareholders' Meeting in Charlottehttp://www.democracynow.org/2012/5/9/from_coal_to_foreclosures_bank_of
tag:democracynow.org,2012-05-09:en/story/ebba87 NERMEEN SHAIKH : We stay in North Carolina, where Occupy Wall Street protesters, environmental activists and struggling homeowners are among hundreds gathered to protest at Charlotte-based Bank of America&#8217;s annual shareholder meeting. They&#8217;re calling attention to the bank&#8217;s involvement in the financial crisis, its support for the coal industry, and its long record of alleged foreclosure abuses. On Tuesday, Bank of America began mailing letters to customers who may qualify to have their home loans reduced as part of a multi-state settlement over its foreclosure abuses. Meanwhile, eight protesters were arrested outside the lender&#8217;s building in New York City.
GUILLERMO CALLE : I&#8217;m still living in my house, and I&#8217;m still fighting to stay in my house. I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s fair for Bank of America to throw people and families on the street. I think they should work out a better deal with the homeowners and families.
AMY GOODMAN : Today&#8217;s protest is a test run for activism targeting September&#8217;s Democratic National Convention, which will be held in Charlotte. The city has enacted a broad array of unconventional police powers that are in effect already for today&#8217;s demonstrations. Police will be authorized to stop and search anyone carrying a backpack, purse or briefcase with the intent to conceal anything on a long list of prohibited items, ranging from weapons to markers to bicycle helmets. The new police powers were authorized by a city council ordinance earlier this year that also banned camping in Charlotte, effectively razing the Occupy Charlotte community.
For more, we&#8217;re going to Charlotte to two guests. Rebecca Tarbotton is executive director of Rainforest Action Network, which is calling on Bank of America, the largest financier of coal, to transition its investments out of coal and toward energy efficiency and renewable energy. And Rachel LaForest is with us, executive director of Right to the City Alliance, a national coalition of community groups organizing around foreclosures. The group is bringing roughly 175 residents who have been evicted by Bank of America, along with community members from Miami, Boston, New Orleans, Virginia, to the protest. On Thursday, it&#8217;s hosting a one-day &quot;Urban Congress&quot; for groups to share their home-defense tactics.
Rebecca Tarbotton and Rachel LaForest, welcome to Democracy Now! Rachel, let&#8217;s begin with you. Lay out what, overall, this protest is about. It&#8217;s bringing together many different groups.
RACHEL LAFOREST : Yes, good morning, Amy. Thanks for having us.
So, this protest is bringing together organizations from about over 30 cities throughout the country—you mentioned some of them—New York; Los Angeles; Boston; Kentucky; Tennessee; the Bay Area; Providence, Rhode Island; Boston. Folks are coming to Charlotte in order to stand their ground against the predatory practices of Bank of America, against the poisoning that Bank of America has done to their communities, against the destruction that Bank of America has leveraged against their families, in defense of everything that they&#8217;ve worked so hard to build for. And so, we&#8217;re coming to their shareholders&#8217; meeting in order to stand before their key shareholders and say, &quot;This is what your practices have done to our lives. And we are entering into this space now to become decision makers and ensure that this is something that stops.&quot; At the same time, we&#8217;re going to have a thousand—
AMY GOODMAN : Why Bank of America, in particular, Rachel?
RACHEL LAFOREST : Bank of America is one of the—I mean, around the foreclosure crisis, in particular, Bank of America holds $88 million in their servicing portfolio of the foreclosure mortgages that exist. That&#8217;s the second in the nation. They have a horrible, horrible rate of foreclosure. At the same time, they received $230 [billion] in tax bailouts, paid no taxes in 2009, got a billion-dollar tax rebate in 2010, and are systematically putting people out of their homes.
NERMEEN SHAIKH : Rachel, you&#8217;ve also pointed out that Bank of America has been discriminating against low-income people through some of the practices that you name—predatory lending, foreclosure fraud, denying loan modifications, etc. But you say that they also target, in particular, people of color. Could you elaborate on that?
RACHEL LAFOREST : So, the statistics and the research show that communities that have been first and worst hit by this housing and foreclosure crisis in the country are communities that are low-income and mainly people of color communities. So if you do a review of the foreclosure portfolio of the mortgages that Bank of America holds, the vast majority of the mortgages that are being foreclosed upon, people who are being evicted from their homes, are people of color from low-income communities.
And it began with a predatory lending practice. Bank of America had a large role in the subprime lending practices that were moving two and three and four years ago, even as early as 10 years ago, really shopping mortgages—shopping, you know, mortgages to families that would either be unable to pay the ballooning prices that would skyrocket towards the end of their mortgage or honing in on low-income communities of color, who they knew might not be able to make ends meet and, given the economic crisis, were more likely to either lose their job and wind up with a mortgage under water.
NERMEEN SHAIKH : So what are some of the key demands that the protesters will be making today at the shareholder meeting?
RACHEL LAFOREST : Around the foreclosure crisis, our demands are very, very clear. For one, we want Bank of America to stop—to stop profiting from the crisis that they&#8217;ve created, to make a reduction in principal the norm and how they move their business forward, especially in low-income communities of color. We&#8217;re demanding that they pay their fair share of taxes. If they are paying taxes and contributing to the revenue of cities and states, then we will more readily and more quickly see an end to the economic crisis that this country is in. And we&#8217;re demanding a moratorium on foreclosures and evictions. While there are AG investigations that are moving forward, while they&#8217;re under investigations federally and from state to state across the board, we&#8217;re asking that there be a moratorium on foreclosures and evictions until more information can be revealed—not that we need any more information; there&#8217;s tons of information out there already, but so that we can really start to piece together a fuller case of what this is—look like.
AMY GOODMAN : You think you are already having an effect. Bank of America started sending letters to thousands of homeowners throughout the country offering to forgive a portion of the principal balance on their mortgages by an average of $150,000 each. When did this start? Is this part of what you have been calling for?
RACHEL LAFOREST : So, member organizations from Right to the City Alliance have—many of them have been working around this foreclosure crisis for a decade. This 200,000 people who are being granted, if they qualify, a principal reduction on their mortgage is a drop in the bucket. And while it&#8217;s really wonderful that Bank of America may be recognizing that it needs to step up and do the right thing in some cases, we&#8217;re talking about a number that would essentially be in the neighborhood two people out of a hundred people are going to be granted a reduction in principal, and the other 98 will be removed from their homes. So, 200,000 out of the 11.1 million homes that are underwater right now, and people who are at risk of losing their homes, is nothing. It&#8217;s not enough, though I do think that it comes directly out of the organizing and the groundwork and the swell of information and power around this 99 percent versus 1 percent, you know, that&#8217;s come up in the wake of Occupy and that&#8217;s really been growing to a crescendo. And I think it&#8217;s only going to grow and get better from here on in. Today is about maintaining that pressure, growing our numbers and showing people that if you&#8217;re vigilant about this, they will begin to move in a particular direction, and that this is something we have the power to do.
AMY GOODMAN : Rebecca Tarbotton, you&#8217;re executive director of the Rainforest Action Network. Why is RAN involved with this massive protest, not just in front of Bank of America today in Charlotte at the shareholders&#8217; meeting, but at what has been taking place here in New York and around the country?
REBECCA TARBOTTON : Hi, Amy. Thanks for having me.
RAN is involved in today with Bank of America, specifically, because climate change is the most real and present danger that we have to the environment and to people all around the country and the world, and Bank of America is the lead financier of coal in the country. And in particular, they—coal-fired power plants, for instance, are the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, which is the cause of climate change and climate chaos. So we&#8217;re here very specifically to say to Bank of America, &quot;Look, you need to get out of coal, if you&#8217;re serious about this—or if any of us are serious about this country transitioning out of fossil fuels and into renewable energy.&quot;
We&#8217;re part of 99 Percent Power, because about—in November, a group of community rights organizations, environmental organizations, unions came together realizing that the space that was opened by Occupy has really created a moment where Americans and all of us are ready to really go directly to corporations with our demands. RAN&#8217;s been working on corporate campaigning for about 25 years, and we saw the space created by Occupy as a really galvanizing moment to build more power than we&#8217;ve ever had before, to really take our demands directly to the real decision makers in this country, which is corporate America.
NERMEEN SHAIKH : Rebecca, could you say something specifically about the controversial practice of mountaintop removal coal mining and Bank of America&#8217;s involvement in it? The Rainforest Action Network has done a lot of work around this, pointing out also that the U.S. is the second-largest coal producer in the world.
REBECCA TARBOTTON : Bank of America is the lead financier of mountaintop removal mining, which, as you said, is a practice of mining which is really the worst of the worst mining that we see anywhere, that&#8217;s essentially blowing the tops off of mountains in Appalachia, destroying people&#8217;s homes, polluting their water supplies. And that&#8217;s even before it gets into the coal plants, where it&#8217;s burnt and creates air pollution in inner-city areas and all around our country. Mountaintop removal is really the canary in the coal mine for our reliance on fossil fuels. The kinds of poverty and destruction that&#8217;s created by that practice, that is fueled by Bank of America&#8217;s money, is emblematic of the wrong direction for this country and the wrong direction that our—for our banks. The same way that banks are foreclosing on Americans&#8217; homes, they&#8217;re foreclosing on our climate by continuing to fund and increasing their funding of coal, whether it be mountaintop removal, coal exports or retrofitting old, ailing coal plants so they can keep burning coal for another 50 years. Bank of America is top of the list for all three of those things.
AMY GOODMAN : You know, we tried to get Bank of America on the broadcast today, but they didn&#8217;t respond to our calls. What is their response to your organizing efforts, Rebecca, especially around the issue of mountaintop removal?
REBECCA TARBOTTON : You know, it&#8217;s a very interesting question, Amy. We have been bringing this issue to Bank of America for a few years now. And not so very long ago, Bank of America released a coal policy that we called, in no uncertain terms, a love letter to the coal industry. In that, they stated that coal was a very important part of the energy mix for the United States moving forward and that they were proud to be part of that, that carbon capture and sequestration was the answer. And, &quot;Oh, by the way, we will endeavor to reduce our funding for the companies that are doing most of the mountaintop removal mining.&quot;
We haven&#8217;t seen evidence that that has actually happened. So, while we know that Bank of America has this on their radar—in fact, we&#8217;ve had very recent intel intelligence from them that they are very aware that coal is one of the top issues of concern in this country around Bank of America&#8217;s practices, along with their economic injustice that they&#8217;re fueling—we are not—we have not seen any evidence that Bank of America is really putting their money where their mouth is. They&#8217;ve talked a good talk about being good corporate citizens, about caring about the environment, about caring about climate change. But we aren&#8217;t seeing the evidence in where they&#8217;re putting their financing and what they&#8217;re underwriting. In 2009, 2010, Bank of America underwrote $4.3 billion to the coal industry. In 2010, 2011, that went up to $6.8 billion. That&#8217;s including an increase in their financing for mountaintop removal. So we need to see some real change, and we need to see it fast, if we&#8217;re going to believe the rhetoric we&#8217;re hearing from them.
NERMEEN SHAIKH : Rebecca, can you say why your organization, the Rainforest Action Network, was denied a spot at Bank of America&#8217;s Earth Day expo earlier this year?
REBECCA TARBOTTON : That&#8217;s a great question. We felt that we were going to be able to be a very educational presence for—to the many masses of people that come to that event every year. We weren&#8217;t exactly given a very direct response for why we were denied, but we—reading between the lines, we know that Bank of America is very concerned about the reputational risk that is brought to their doorstep by all the many hundreds of people that are today outside their offices in—or outside their shareholder meeting here in Charlotte, by the kind of publicity that they&#8217;re getting for their predatory lending, their fueling of the foreclosure crisis, and their funding of coal. I don&#8217;t think they want any exposure that they don&#8217;t have to have, so they took the opportunity to keep us out of that expo when they could.
AMY GOODMAN : Rachel LaForest, let&#8217;s end by talking about the police in Charlotte and today the Bank of America shareholder meeting taking place being declared an extraordinary event and what that means.
RACHEL LAFOREST : So, essentially, the city manager of North Carolina—of Charlotte, North Carolina, sometime last week declared this an extraordinary event, which essentially means that the police are to follow the ordinances set forth by the Democratic National Convention. So it means a heightened level of police presence. It means that things like you mentioned before, Amy—magic markers; unlabeled bottles of medication, you know, whether they be prescription medication or not; backpacks; duffle bags—are all subject to search, all subject to seizure. And essentially, it&#8217;s moved as a deterrent to have people show up. You know, these are some of the things that politicians and corporations like to put in place and like to have the police move on, in order to prevent organizations like ours, coalitions like ours, from actually coming and moving forward on our stated goals.
It hasn&#8217;t been a deterrent. It hasn&#8217;t worked. We&#8217;re out there. We&#8217;ve got puppets. We&#8217;ve got signs. People have incredible energy. There&#8217;s instruments. There&#8217;s bullhorns. We&#8217;re going to be having a boxing match: Brian &quot;Big Bank&quot; Moynihan against Miss 99 Percent. There&#8217;s so much energy and beauty and power out there. No one has been deterred by this extraordinary event declaration that the city manager has put forward. We&#8217;re prepared. We&#8217;re not foolish, we&#8217;re prepared. We have our own security in place. We want to make sure that our folks are protected. We want to make sure we&#8217;re aware of what&#8217;s moving on the ground in the city. There&#8217;s been lots of scouting of the different sites where we&#8217;ll have feeder marches coming into our march, our main march that&#8217;s happening at the front of the building where the shareholders&#8217; meeting is taking place. We&#8217;ve got shareholders that are going to be inside, and that&#8217;s one of the really key pieces, you know, in moving forward, is they need to know that this is growing. And what folks listening to this show need to know is that it has to grow, that we actually need to step up and become shareholders of these corporations and show up at places where they&#8217;re making decisions, so they can no longer make these decisions behind closed doors and in a way that affects our families this way. So, city ordinance be what it may, we&#8217;re here. We&#8217;re here to get a job done, we&#8217;re here to present our demands, and we&#8217;re here to grow this movement.
AMY GOODMAN : And the significance of President Obama, who will be giving his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in September, being in the Bank of America Stadium, the—moving into the second extraordinary event, if another one doesn&#8217;t happen before, what the city council passed these laws for? Let me put that question to Rebecca Tarbotton of Rainforest Action Network.
REBECCA TARBOTTON : I think that there is a symbolic importance, above all, about—of Obama being at the Democratic National Convention here in Charlotte. There is an incredibly cozy relationship between our politicians and our corporations, which is why—and Americans are getting frustrated with the political process. We feel like we&#8217;ve been banging our heads against the door of Congress for far too long. And knowing how our politicians are essentially bought and sold by major corporations, that&#8217;s why we&#8217;re going right to the doorsteps of those corporations, right to the boardrooms of the 1 percent, to say, &quot;We want to talk to the decision makers. And unfortunately, they are not the people that we elected, because your money, corporate money, is what&#8217;s electing our politicians.&quot;
AMY GOODMAN : We want to thank—
REBECCA TARBOTTON : We want to create a framework for the upcoming—of the upcoming elections, which is basically forcing politicians to choose whether they are a candidate of the 99 percent or the candidate of the 1 percent.
AMY GOODMAN : Rebecca Tarbotton, thanks for joining us, from Rainforest Action Network, and Rachel LaForest, executive director of Right to the City, both speaking to us from Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are involved with protests both inside and outside the Bank of America shareholders&#8217; meeting that is taking place today.
This is Democracy Now! , democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report . When we come back, we&#8217;re going to Madison, Wisconsin. Democratic primary was held there. The Milwaukee mayor will now run against the embattled governor of Wisconsin, Governor Scott Walker, next month in a recall election. We&#8217;ll be speaking with the editor of The Progressive magazine, Matthew Rothschild. Stay with us. NERMEENSHAIKH: We stay in North Carolina, where Occupy Wall Street protesters, environmental activists and struggling homeowners are among hundreds gathered to protest at Charlotte-based Bank of America’s annual shareholder meeting. They’re calling attention to the bank’s involvement in the financial crisis, its support for the coal industry, and its long record of alleged foreclosure abuses. On Tuesday, Bank of America began mailing letters to customers who may qualify to have their home loans reduced as part of a multi-state settlement over its foreclosure abuses. Meanwhile, eight protesters were arrested outside the lender’s building in New York City.

GUILLERMOCALLE: I’m still living in my house, and I’m still fighting to stay in my house. I don’t think it’s fair for Bank of America to throw people and families on the street. I think they should work out a better deal with the homeowners and families.

AMYGOODMAN: Today’s protest is a test run for activism targeting September’s Democratic National Convention, which will be held in Charlotte. The city has enacted a broad array of unconventional police powers that are in effect already for today’s demonstrations. Police will be authorized to stop and search anyone carrying a backpack, purse or briefcase with the intent to conceal anything on a long list of prohibited items, ranging from weapons to markers to bicycle helmets. The new police powers were authorized by a city council ordinance earlier this year that also banned camping in Charlotte, effectively razing the Occupy Charlotte community.

For more, we’re going to Charlotte to two guests. Rebecca Tarbotton is executive director of Rainforest Action Network, which is calling on Bank of America, the largest financier of coal, to transition its investments out of coal and toward energy efficiency and renewable energy. And Rachel LaForest is with us, executive director of Right to the City Alliance, a national coalition of community groups organizing around foreclosures. The group is bringing roughly 175 residents who have been evicted by Bank of America, along with community members from Miami, Boston, New Orleans, Virginia, to the protest. On Thursday, it’s hosting a one-day "Urban Congress" for groups to share their home-defense tactics.

Rebecca Tarbotton and Rachel LaForest, welcome to Democracy Now! Rachel, let’s begin with you. Lay out what, overall, this protest is about. It’s bringing together many different groups.

RACHELLAFOREST: Yes, good morning, Amy. Thanks for having us.

So, this protest is bringing together organizations from about over 30 cities throughout the country—you mentioned some of them—New York; Los Angeles; Boston; Kentucky; Tennessee; the Bay Area; Providence, Rhode Island; Boston. Folks are coming to Charlotte in order to stand their ground against the predatory practices of Bank of America, against the poisoning that Bank of America has done to their communities, against the destruction that Bank of America has leveraged against their families, in defense of everything that they’ve worked so hard to build for. And so, we’re coming to their shareholders’ meeting in order to stand before their key shareholders and say, "This is what your practices have done to our lives. And we are entering into this space now to become decision makers and ensure that this is something that stops." At the same time, we’re going to have a thousand—

AMYGOODMAN: Why Bank of America, in particular, Rachel?

RACHELLAFOREST: Bank of America is one of the—I mean, around the foreclosure crisis, in particular, Bank of America holds $88 million in their servicing portfolio of the foreclosure mortgages that exist. That’s the second in the nation. They have a horrible, horrible rate of foreclosure. At the same time, they received $230 [billion] in tax bailouts, paid no taxes in 2009, got a billion-dollar tax rebate in 2010, and are systematically putting people out of their homes.

NERMEENSHAIKH: Rachel, you’ve also pointed out that Bank of America has been discriminating against low-income people through some of the practices that you name—predatory lending, foreclosure fraud, denying loan modifications, etc. But you say that they also target, in particular, people of color. Could you elaborate on that?

RACHELLAFOREST: So, the statistics and the research show that communities that have been first and worst hit by this housing and foreclosure crisis in the country are communities that are low-income and mainly people of color communities. So if you do a review of the foreclosure portfolio of the mortgages that Bank of America holds, the vast majority of the mortgages that are being foreclosed upon, people who are being evicted from their homes, are people of color from low-income communities.

And it began with a predatory lending practice. Bank of America had a large role in the subprime lending practices that were moving two and three and four years ago, even as early as 10 years ago, really shopping mortgages—shopping, you know, mortgages to families that would either be unable to pay the ballooning prices that would skyrocket towards the end of their mortgage or honing in on low-income communities of color, who they knew might not be able to make ends meet and, given the economic crisis, were more likely to either lose their job and wind up with a mortgage under water.

NERMEENSHAIKH: So what are some of the key demands that the protesters will be making today at the shareholder meeting?

RACHELLAFOREST: Around the foreclosure crisis, our demands are very, very clear. For one, we want Bank of America to stop—to stop profiting from the crisis that they’ve created, to make a reduction in principal the norm and how they move their business forward, especially in low-income communities of color. We’re demanding that they pay their fair share of taxes. If they are paying taxes and contributing to the revenue of cities and states, then we will more readily and more quickly see an end to the economic crisis that this country is in. And we’re demanding a moratorium on foreclosures and evictions. While there are AG investigations that are moving forward, while they’re under investigations federally and from state to state across the board, we’re asking that there be a moratorium on foreclosures and evictions until more information can be revealed—not that we need any more information; there’s tons of information out there already, but so that we can really start to piece together a fuller case of what this is—look like.

AMYGOODMAN: You think you are already having an effect. Bank of America started sending letters to thousands of homeowners throughout the country offering to forgive a portion of the principal balance on their mortgages by an average of $150,000 each. When did this start? Is this part of what you have been calling for?

RACHELLAFOREST: So, member organizations from Right to the City Alliance have—many of them have been working around this foreclosure crisis for a decade. This 200,000 people who are being granted, if they qualify, a principal reduction on their mortgage is a drop in the bucket. And while it’s really wonderful that Bank of America may be recognizing that it needs to step up and do the right thing in some cases, we’re talking about a number that would essentially be in the neighborhood two people out of a hundred people are going to be granted a reduction in principal, and the other 98 will be removed from their homes. So, 200,000 out of the 11.1 million homes that are underwater right now, and people who are at risk of losing their homes, is nothing. It’s not enough, though I do think that it comes directly out of the organizing and the groundwork and the swell of information and power around this 99 percent versus 1 percent, you know, that’s come up in the wake of Occupy and that’s really been growing to a crescendo. And I think it’s only going to grow and get better from here on in. Today is about maintaining that pressure, growing our numbers and showing people that if you’re vigilant about this, they will begin to move in a particular direction, and that this is something we have the power to do.

AMYGOODMAN: Rebecca Tarbotton, you’re executive director of the Rainforest Action Network. Why is RAN involved with this massive protest, not just in front of Bank of America today in Charlotte at the shareholders’ meeting, but at what has been taking place here in New York and around the country?

REBECCATARBOTTON: Hi, Amy. Thanks for having me.

RAN is involved in today with Bank of America, specifically, because climate change is the most real and present danger that we have to the environment and to people all around the country and the world, and Bank of America is the lead financier of coal in the country. And in particular, they—coal-fired power plants, for instance, are the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, which is the cause of climate change and climate chaos. So we’re here very specifically to say to Bank of America, "Look, you need to get out of coal, if you’re serious about this—or if any of us are serious about this country transitioning out of fossil fuels and into renewable energy."

We’re part of 99 Percent Power, because about—in November, a group of community rights organizations, environmental organizations, unions came together realizing that the space that was opened by Occupy has really created a moment where Americans and all of us are ready to really go directly to corporations with our demands. RAN’s been working on corporate campaigning for about 25 years, and we saw the space created by Occupy as a really galvanizing moment to build more power than we’ve ever had before, to really take our demands directly to the real decision makers in this country, which is corporate America.

NERMEENSHAIKH: Rebecca, could you say something specifically about the controversial practice of mountaintop removal coal mining and Bank of America’s involvement in it? The Rainforest Action Network has done a lot of work around this, pointing out also that the U.S. is the second-largest coal producer in the world.

REBECCATARBOTTON: Bank of America is the lead financier of mountaintop removal mining, which, as you said, is a practice of mining which is really the worst of the worst mining that we see anywhere, that’s essentially blowing the tops off of mountains in Appalachia, destroying people’s homes, polluting their water supplies. And that’s even before it gets into the coal plants, where it’s burnt and creates air pollution in inner-city areas and all around our country. Mountaintop removal is really the canary in the coal mine for our reliance on fossil fuels. The kinds of poverty and destruction that’s created by that practice, that is fueled by Bank of America’s money, is emblematic of the wrong direction for this country and the wrong direction that our—for our banks. The same way that banks are foreclosing on Americans’ homes, they’re foreclosing on our climate by continuing to fund and increasing their funding of coal, whether it be mountaintop removal, coal exports or retrofitting old, ailing coal plants so they can keep burning coal for another 50 years. Bank of America is top of the list for all three of those things.

AMYGOODMAN: You know, we tried to get Bank of America on the broadcast today, but they didn’t respond to our calls. What is their response to your organizing efforts, Rebecca, especially around the issue of mountaintop removal?

REBECCATARBOTTON: You know, it’s a very interesting question, Amy. We have been bringing this issue to Bank of America for a few years now. And not so very long ago, Bank of America released a coal policy that we called, in no uncertain terms, a love letter to the coal industry. In that, they stated that coal was a very important part of the energy mix for the United States moving forward and that they were proud to be part of that, that carbon capture and sequestration was the answer. And, "Oh, by the way, we will endeavor to reduce our funding for the companies that are doing most of the mountaintop removal mining."

We haven’t seen evidence that that has actually happened. So, while we know that Bank of America has this on their radar—in fact, we’ve had very recent intel intelligence from them that they are very aware that coal is one of the top issues of concern in this country around Bank of America’s practices, along with their economic injustice that they’re fueling—we are not—we have not seen any evidence that Bank of America is really putting their money where their mouth is. They’ve talked a good talk about being good corporate citizens, about caring about the environment, about caring about climate change. But we aren’t seeing the evidence in where they’re putting their financing and what they’re underwriting. In 2009, 2010, Bank of America underwrote $4.3 billion to the coal industry. In 2010, 2011, that went up to $6.8 billion. That’s including an increase in their financing for mountaintop removal. So we need to see some real change, and we need to see it fast, if we’re going to believe the rhetoric we’re hearing from them.

NERMEENSHAIKH: Rebecca, can you say why your organization, the Rainforest Action Network, was denied a spot at Bank of America’s Earth Day expo earlier this year?

REBECCATARBOTTON: That’s a great question. We felt that we were going to be able to be a very educational presence for—to the many masses of people that come to that event every year. We weren’t exactly given a very direct response for why we were denied, but we—reading between the lines, we know that Bank of America is very concerned about the reputational risk that is brought to their doorstep by all the many hundreds of people that are today outside their offices in—or outside their shareholder meeting here in Charlotte, by the kind of publicity that they’re getting for their predatory lending, their fueling of the foreclosure crisis, and their funding of coal. I don’t think they want any exposure that they don’t have to have, so they took the opportunity to keep us out of that expo when they could.

AMYGOODMAN: Rachel LaForest, let’s end by talking about the police in Charlotte and today the Bank of America shareholder meeting taking place being declared an extraordinary event and what that means.

RACHELLAFOREST: So, essentially, the city manager of North Carolina—of Charlotte, North Carolina, sometime last week declared this an extraordinary event, which essentially means that the police are to follow the ordinances set forth by the Democratic National Convention. So it means a heightened level of police presence. It means that things like you mentioned before, Amy—magic markers; unlabeled bottles of medication, you know, whether they be prescription medication or not; backpacks; duffle bags—are all subject to search, all subject to seizure. And essentially, it’s moved as a deterrent to have people show up. You know, these are some of the things that politicians and corporations like to put in place and like to have the police move on, in order to prevent organizations like ours, coalitions like ours, from actually coming and moving forward on our stated goals.

It hasn’t been a deterrent. It hasn’t worked. We’re out there. We’ve got puppets. We’ve got signs. People have incredible energy. There’s instruments. There’s bullhorns. We’re going to be having a boxing match: Brian "Big Bank" Moynihan against Miss 99 Percent. There’s so much energy and beauty and power out there. No one has been deterred by this extraordinary event declaration that the city manager has put forward. We’re prepared. We’re not foolish, we’re prepared. We have our own security in place. We want to make sure that our folks are protected. We want to make sure we’re aware of what’s moving on the ground in the city. There’s been lots of scouting of the different sites where we’ll have feeder marches coming into our march, our main march that’s happening at the front of the building where the shareholders’ meeting is taking place. We’ve got shareholders that are going to be inside, and that’s one of the really key pieces, you know, in moving forward, is they need to know that this is growing. And what folks listening to this show need to know is that it has to grow, that we actually need to step up and become shareholders of these corporations and show up at places where they’re making decisions, so they can no longer make these decisions behind closed doors and in a way that affects our families this way. So, city ordinance be what it may, we’re here. We’re here to get a job done, we’re here to present our demands, and we’re here to grow this movement.

AMYGOODMAN: And the significance of President Obama, who will be giving his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in September, being in the Bank of America Stadium, the—moving into the second extraordinary event, if another one doesn’t happen before, what the city council passed these laws for? Let me put that question to Rebecca Tarbotton of Rainforest Action Network.

REBECCATARBOTTON: I think that there is a symbolic importance, above all, about—of Obama being at the Democratic National Convention here in Charlotte. There is an incredibly cozy relationship between our politicians and our corporations, which is why—and Americans are getting frustrated with the political process. We feel like we’ve been banging our heads against the door of Congress for far too long. And knowing how our politicians are essentially bought and sold by major corporations, that’s why we’re going right to the doorsteps of those corporations, right to the boardrooms of the 1 percent, to say, "We want to talk to the decision makers. And unfortunately, they are not the people that we elected, because your money, corporate money, is what’s electing our politicians."

AMYGOODMAN: We want to thank—

REBECCATARBOTTON: We want to create a framework for the upcoming—of the upcoming elections, which is basically forcing politicians to choose whether they are a candidate of the 99 percent or the candidate of the 1 percent.

AMYGOODMAN: Rebecca Tarbotton, thanks for joining us, from Rainforest Action Network, and Rachel LaForest, executive director of Right to the City, both speaking to us from Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are involved with protests both inside and outside the Bank of America shareholders’ meeting that is taking place today.

This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. When we come back, we’re going to Madison, Wisconsin. Democratic primary was held there. The Milwaukee mayor will now run against the embattled governor of Wisconsin, Governor Scott Walker, next month in a recall election. We’ll be speaking with the editor of The Progressive magazine, Matthew Rothschild. Stay with us.

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Wed, 09 May 2012 00:00:00 -0400"We Need to Make a Ruckus": Robert Reich Hails Occupy for Exposing Concentration of Wealth and Powerhttp://www.democracynow.org/2012/5/8/we_need_to_make_a_ruckus
tag:democracynow.org,2012-05-08:en/story/ea8bff AMY GOODMAN : And so, if President Obama were not re-elected, and it was a Republican in office, it was President Romney, do you think it would be any more extreme?
ROBERT REICH : Oh, yes.
AMY GOODMAN : In what way?
ROBERT REICH : Are you kidding? Well, I mean, look at—
AMY GOODMAN : Because the people on the outside, who you say got demobilized when President Obama was elected, and perhaps when President Clinton was elected, would be far more mobilized, because they would not expect to have a friend in the White House.
ROBERT REICH : Well, but the cost of a Romney White House, in terms of everything we believe. I mean, he has embraced Paul Ryan&#8217;s budget. He says it&#8217;s a marvelous budget, which means that we not only get a larger military and we not only get huge cuts in domestic discretionary, including education and Medicare, Medicaid, every safety net, every public investment, but we also at the same time get huge tax cuts for the very rich. We put the economy and our society on a track back to pre-New Deal. And think of the Supreme Court openings that are going to occur. I mean, I—you know, the most elderly judges—justices who are there have been appointed—were appointed by Democrats.
Now, I think the cost of a Romney administration is so huge, even if it would generate more public outrage, that I would say, let&#8217;s all get behind Obama for a second term; let&#8217;s make sure, to the extent possible, we have a Democratic Congress; but let&#8217;s understand that that&#8217;s just the beginning of our task. We&#8217;ve got to make them move in a progressive direction. It&#8217;s just like 1936, when Franklin D. Roosevelt was running for re-election and somebody said to him, &quot;Mr. President, if you&#8217;re re-elected, I want you to do this and this and this and this.&quot; And he said, &quot;Ma&#8217;am, I want to do all these things, but if I am re-elected, you must make me do them.&quot; You see, democracy—you know this. I mean, this is what Democracy Now! is all about. Democracy is a practice. It&#8217;s a living form of ongoing citizen engagement. And we cannot allow ourselves to be lulled into either complacency or cynicism. Cynicism is the worst form of cop out, because—
AMY GOODMAN : You were on the inside as secretary of labor. What did you feel was the most effective way for people on the outside to have an effect? As you said, you walked through the streets on the day that welfare reform is going to be signed, and you look and you see that no one is around. What makes the difference? And talk of today, about Occupy, as well.
ROBERT REICH : Well, yeah, I think, number one, it is very important for people to visibly demonstrate. Now, it&#8217;s hard to break through in the media, but visible demonstrations with a lot of people do help. They shift the media&#8217;s attention. The Occupy movements put inequality on the front page. The Occupy movement succeeded in changing the tenor and the shape of debate in this country about what was happening and allowed the President of the United States to say that the defining issue of the campaign is fairness, who gets what. The Occupy campaign—without the Occupy campaign, none of that would happen. Number two—
AMY GOODMAN : Were you surprised by it?
ROBERT REICH : I was surprised that in a relatively short time—you know, I&#8217;ve been around for a while—civil rights, Vietnam, anti-Vietnam, so on. I was surprised that in a matter of months the Occupy movement could claim so much attention and so effectively shape the debate around the concentration of wealth and power in this country. And that, to me, is an indication of how much can be accomplished.
But that&#8217;s not all. I mean, we have to go on. We&#8217;ve got to also get involved in electoral politics. In relatively safe Democratic districts, it&#8217;s important to put up progressives, so that the center of gravity doesn&#8217;t keep on moving to the right in this country. It&#8217;s important to get behind a plank of specific ideas, like resurrecting Glass-Steagall, like breaking up the big banks, like making sure that taxes are increased on the very wealthy and the earned income tax credit, which is basically a wage subsidy for the working poor, be expanded, and so on. Get behind six or seven major ideas that we all think are critically important to the future and push them, and push them dramatically. Get big money out of politics. You know, I&#8217;m the chairman, the national chairman, of Common Cause, an old organization. It&#8217;s been doing this work for years. But if we don&#8217;t get big money out of politics, everything else we want to do is hopeless. And that is a fundamental, fundamental, basic goal, reversing Citizens United . All of these things can be done.
AMY GOODMAN : You talk about President Obama too much appeasing the Republicans, but isn&#8217;t it also the people who will fund his campaign, expected to raise more than a billion dollars?
ROBERT REICH : Yes, and we&#8217;ve got to have campaign finance reform and lift the lid on the amount of campaign finance, so no president or no would-be president is at a disadvantage in accepting public financing.
AMY GOODMAN : Are you concerned about the police crackdown on the Occupy movement, a level of militarization of the police in this country that we have rarely seen before?
ROBERT REICH : Yeah, and it&#8217;s ironic that, under the First Amendment, we now have a Supreme Court that says corporations are people and money is speech, and yet when the people really do mobilize under their First Amendment rights to free assembly, the police, in city after city, crack down and don&#8217;t allow the people to be heard. I mean, if corporations are people and if money is speech, then it becomes even more critical that we expand and enrich the definition of First Amendment—of the First Amendment to allow people to express themselves.
AMY GOODMAN : It would be interesting to see this militarized police force deal with corporations as people.
ROBERT REICH : Yes. I mean, I will—I&#8217;ve said before, I&#8217;ll believe that corporations are people when Texas executes a corporation. I mean, once we go down the track of treating corporations as people and money as speech, there is really no end to the distorting effects of big money and corporate money in politics. That&#8217;s why it&#8217;s not just Citizens United . It&#8217;s also several Supreme Court precedents that have got to be changed—if necessary, by a constitutional amendment.
AMY GOODMAN : A constitutional amendment that would...?
ROBERT REICH : That would say, effectively, corporations are not people and money is not speech. And it is perfectly appropriate for Congress to regulate, especially in a major—in a presidential campaign, to regulate and restrict big money.
AMY GOODMAN : Finally, the issue of austerity and what&#8217;s happening abroad and how it could affect what&#8217;s happening at home. In the headlines today, reading about German Chancellor Angela Merkel rejecting calls by the newly elected Socialist French president, François Hollande, to renegotiate the European fiscal pact that&#8217;s led to widespread austerity measures across continent—across the continent. What&#8217;s happening in France? What&#8217;s happening in Greece?
ROBERT REICH : Austerity doesn&#8217;t work. You know, there are two doctrines perpetrated by the right, in the United States and in Europe. One is supply-side, trickle-down economics. We know that doesn&#8217;t work. They keep on trying to convince us it does. We&#8217;ve seen, under Reagan, under George W. Bush, that when the taxes are cut on the rich and on corporations, nothing trickles down. The other, first cousin, is austerity economics. When you have high unemployment and a lot of underutilized capacity, the idea is you cut public budgets. That&#8217;s insane, because that leads to a shrinking of the entire economy, when the real problem is, to the extent that you&#8217;re worried about fiscal discipline, the ratio of debt to the size of the economy overall. If you shrink the economy, that ratio becomes worse and worse. That&#8217;s an austerity trap. That&#8217;s what happened to Spain. It&#8217;s what&#8217;s happening even to Britain. It&#8217;s what&#8217;s happening to Europe as a whole.
Angela Merkel is absolutely wrong. You need jobs and growth first, before you embrace austerity. Now, we&#8217;re going to come to exactly the same decision point in January, because we&#8217;ve got the sequestration cuts coming up. If nothing is done between now and then, we are going to be forced to embrace our own version of austerity economics at a time when there is still going to be high unemployment and still a lot of underutilized capacity here in the United States. We have got to understand, as Europe has got to understand, as I think François Hollande is going to push Germany to understand, that jobs and growth have to come first, before so-called fiscal austerity discipline.
AMY GOODMAN : So, finally, you think Occupy is the answer?
ROBERT REICH : I think Occupy is certainly part of the answer. You know, I would say we need to make a ruckus in this country. We also need to get very, very much more clever about politics. We need to get involved in electoral politics. We need to—wherever we see it, Amy, we need to fight cynicism. We need to understand that this is a long haul. You know, take civil rights, women&#8217;s suffrage, anything that we&#8217;ve got accomplished that expands the franchise and expands opportunity in this country, it did not happen in six months. It didn&#8217;t happen in four years. It happened over 20 years. I&#8217;m not saying we should be patient, but we&#8217;ve got to understand that mobilizing and changing the allocation of power in society is a serious and long-term and very difficult process. It&#8217;s necessary for our children and our grandchildren, but it is not going to happen overnight.
AMY GOODMAN : Robert Reich, I want to thank you very much for being with us, professor of public policy at University of California, Berkeley, former secretary of labor in the Clinton administration. Time Magazine named him one of the 10 most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written many books, among them, Aftershock: The Next Economy and America&#8217;s Future . His latest is an e-book called Beyond Outrage: What Has Gone Wrong with Our Economy and Our Democracy, and How to Fix [Them] .
This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we&#8217;re going to talk about Guantánamo and the military tribunals that are taking place right now. Why aren&#8217;t American civilian courts good enough? Stay with us. AMYGOODMAN: And so, if President Obama were not re-elected, and it was a Republican in office, it was President Romney, do you think it would be any more extreme?

ROBERTREICH: Oh, yes.

AMYGOODMAN: In what way?

ROBERTREICH: Are you kidding? Well, I mean, look at—

AMYGOODMAN: Because the people on the outside, who you say got demobilized when President Obama was elected, and perhaps when President Clinton was elected, would be far more mobilized, because they would not expect to have a friend in the White House.

ROBERTREICH: Well, but the cost of a Romney White House, in terms of everything we believe. I mean, he has embraced Paul Ryan’s budget. He says it’s a marvelous budget, which means that we not only get a larger military and we not only get huge cuts in domestic discretionary, including education and Medicare, Medicaid, every safety net, every public investment, but we also at the same time get huge tax cuts for the very rich. We put the economy and our society on a track back to pre-New Deal. And think of the Supreme Court openings that are going to occur. I mean, I—you know, the most elderly judges—justices who are there have been appointed—were appointed by Democrats.

Now, I think the cost of a Romney administration is so huge, even if it would generate more public outrage, that I would say, let’s all get behind Obama for a second term; let’s make sure, to the extent possible, we have a Democratic Congress; but let’s understand that that’s just the beginning of our task. We’ve got to make them move in a progressive direction. It’s just like 1936, when Franklin D. Roosevelt was running for re-election and somebody said to him, "Mr. President, if you’re re-elected, I want you to do this and this and this and this." And he said, "Ma’am, I want to do all these things, but if I am re-elected, you must make me do them." You see, democracy—you know this. I mean, this is what Democracy Now! is all about. Democracy is a practice. It’s a living form of ongoing citizen engagement. And we cannot allow ourselves to be lulled into either complacency or cynicism. Cynicism is the worst form of cop out, because—

AMYGOODMAN: You were on the inside as secretary of labor. What did you feel was the most effective way for people on the outside to have an effect? As you said, you walked through the streets on the day that welfare reform is going to be signed, and you look and you see that no one is around. What makes the difference? And talk of today, about Occupy, as well.

ROBERTREICH: Well, yeah, I think, number one, it is very important for people to visibly demonstrate. Now, it’s hard to break through in the media, but visible demonstrations with a lot of people do help. They shift the media’s attention. The Occupy movements put inequality on the front page. The Occupy movement succeeded in changing the tenor and the shape of debate in this country about what was happening and allowed the President of the United States to say that the defining issue of the campaign is fairness, who gets what. The Occupy campaign—without the Occupy campaign, none of that would happen. Number two—

AMYGOODMAN: Were you surprised by it?

ROBERTREICH: I was surprised that in a relatively short time—you know, I’ve been around for a while—civil rights, Vietnam, anti-Vietnam, so on. I was surprised that in a matter of months the Occupy movement could claim so much attention and so effectively shape the debate around the concentration of wealth and power in this country. And that, to me, is an indication of how much can be accomplished.

But that’s not all. I mean, we have to go on. We’ve got to also get involved in electoral politics. In relatively safe Democratic districts, it’s important to put up progressives, so that the center of gravity doesn’t keep on moving to the right in this country. It’s important to get behind a plank of specific ideas, like resurrecting Glass-Steagall, like breaking up the big banks, like making sure that taxes are increased on the very wealthy and the earned income tax credit, which is basically a wage subsidy for the working poor, be expanded, and so on. Get behind six or seven major ideas that we all think are critically important to the future and push them, and push them dramatically. Get big money out of politics. You know, I’m the chairman, the national chairman, of Common Cause, an old organization. It’s been doing this work for years. But if we don’t get big money out of politics, everything else we want to do is hopeless. And that is a fundamental, fundamental, basic goal, reversing Citizens United. All of these things can be done.

AMYGOODMAN: You talk about President Obama too much appeasing the Republicans, but isn’t it also the people who will fund his campaign, expected to raise more than a billion dollars?

ROBERTREICH: Yes, and we’ve got to have campaign finance reform and lift the lid on the amount of campaign finance, so no president or no would-be president is at a disadvantage in accepting public financing.

AMYGOODMAN: Are you concerned about the police crackdown on the Occupy movement, a level of militarization of the police in this country that we have rarely seen before?

ROBERTREICH: Yeah, and it’s ironic that, under the First Amendment, we now have a Supreme Court that says corporations are people and money is speech, and yet when the people really do mobilize under their First Amendment rights to free assembly, the police, in city after city, crack down and don’t allow the people to be heard. I mean, if corporations are people and if money is speech, then it becomes even more critical that we expand and enrich the definition of First Amendment—of the First Amendment to allow people to express themselves.

AMYGOODMAN: It would be interesting to see this militarized police force deal with corporations as people.

ROBERTREICH: Yes. I mean, I will—I’ve said before, I’ll believe that corporations are people when Texas executes a corporation. I mean, once we go down the track of treating corporations as people and money as speech, there is really no end to the distorting effects of big money and corporate money in politics. That’s why it’s not just Citizens United. It’s also several Supreme Court precedents that have got to be changed—if necessary, by a constitutional amendment.

AMYGOODMAN: A constitutional amendment that would...?

ROBERTREICH: That would say, effectively, corporations are not people and money is not speech. And it is perfectly appropriate for Congress to regulate, especially in a major—in a presidential campaign, to regulate and restrict big money.

AMYGOODMAN: Finally, the issue of austerity and what’s happening abroad and how it could affect what’s happening at home. In the headlines today, reading about German Chancellor Angela Merkel rejecting calls by the newly elected Socialist French president, François Hollande, to renegotiate the European fiscal pact that’s led to widespread austerity measures across continent—across the continent. What’s happening in France? What’s happening in Greece?

ROBERTREICH: Austerity doesn’t work. You know, there are two doctrines perpetrated by the right, in the United States and in Europe. One is supply-side, trickle-down economics. We know that doesn’t work. They keep on trying to convince us it does. We’ve seen, under Reagan, under George W. Bush, that when the taxes are cut on the rich and on corporations, nothing trickles down. The other, first cousin, is austerity economics. When you have high unemployment and a lot of underutilized capacity, the idea is you cut public budgets. That’s insane, because that leads to a shrinking of the entire economy, when the real problem is, to the extent that you’re worried about fiscal discipline, the ratio of debt to the size of the economy overall. If you shrink the economy, that ratio becomes worse and worse. That’s an austerity trap. That’s what happened to Spain. It’s what’s happening even to Britain. It’s what’s happening to Europe as a whole.

Angela Merkel is absolutely wrong. You need jobs and growth first, before you embrace austerity. Now, we’re going to come to exactly the same decision point in January, because we’ve got the sequestration cuts coming up. If nothing is done between now and then, we are going to be forced to embrace our own version of austerity economics at a time when there is still going to be high unemployment and still a lot of underutilized capacity here in the United States. We have got to understand, as Europe has got to understand, as I think François Hollande is going to push Germany to understand, that jobs and growth have to come first, before so-called fiscal austerity discipline.

AMYGOODMAN: So, finally, you think Occupy is the answer?

ROBERTREICH: I think Occupy is certainly part of the answer. You know, I would say we need to make a ruckus in this country. We also need to get very, very much more clever about politics. We need to get involved in electoral politics. We need to—wherever we see it, Amy, we need to fight cynicism. We need to understand that this is a long haul. You know, take civil rights, women’s suffrage, anything that we’ve got accomplished that expands the franchise and expands opportunity in this country, it did not happen in six months. It didn’t happen in four years. It happened over 20 years. I’m not saying we should be patient, but we’ve got to understand that mobilizing and changing the allocation of power in society is a serious and long-term and very difficult process. It’s necessary for our children and our grandchildren, but it is not going to happen overnight.

AMYGOODMAN: Robert Reich, I want to thank you very much for being with us, professor of public policy at University of California, Berkeley, former secretary of labor in the Clinton administration. Time Magazine named him one of the 10 most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written many books, among them, Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future. His latest is an e-book called Beyond Outrage: What Has Gone Wrong with Our Economy and Our Democracy, and How to Fix [Them].

This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we’re going to talk about Guantánamo and the military tribunals that are taking place right now. Why aren’t American civilian courts good enough? Stay with us.

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Tue, 08 May 2012 00:00:00 -0400Exclusive: OWS Activist Cecily McMillan Describes Seizure, Bodily Injuries in Arrest by NYPDhttp://www.democracynow.org/2012/3/23/exclusive_ows_activist_cecily_mcmillan_describes
tag:democracynow.org,2012-03-23:en/story/b987e5 AMY GOODMAN : Last weekend marked six months since the launch of Occupy Wall Street. Here in New York, a new occupation may be taking root in Union Square Park. Dozens are camping out there. Some claim the spot could be the movement&#8217;s new home base. On Saturday, hundreds rallied outside the first park the movement occupied, Zuccotti Park, now renamed Liberty Plaza. Police arrested 73 people.
Movement activists say police are adopting violent and intimidating tactics against them as they peacefully protest. They held a press conference Tuesday outside New York police headquarters. This is Occupy Wall Street activist, Jen Waller.
JEN WALLER : It is when we speak out against the 1 percent and defy them by fighting for public space that we are brutalized. On Saturday night as I simply sat in a park, I was violently arrested with my friends and watched as bloodthirsty cops stomped on their faces, knelt on their necks, pulled them by their hair, and slammed them into windows. I watched as one friend was treated as a battering ram as they carried him into an MTA bus, slamming his head on every step and seat as they went along. I watched as a young woman’s rib was broken, as she hyperventilated, convulsed and seizured in the middle of the street.
AMY GOODMAN : That was last person that Jen Waller mentions, who suffered a seizure and broken rib after she was pulled from the crowd and arrested, is Occupy Wall Street activist Cecily McMillan. Police say she elbowed an officer in the head, giving him a swollen eye. She faces felony charges of assault and obstructing governmental administration. Cecily was released on Monday afternoon after a judge denied a request from the district attorney that bail be set at $20,000, and she&#8217;s joining us now for this exclusive interview.
Cecily McMillan is Northeast regional organizer for the Young Democratic Socialists of America and a graduate student at the New School for Social Research. We&#8217;re also joined by Meghan Maurus, Cecily&#8217;s attorney and mass defense coordinator at the New York City chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Cecily, you limped in here. You&#8217;re very bruised. You have a bruise over your left eye. And I can see, with your—the scoop neck of your T-shirt, you are scratched and it is black and blue. It is—
CECILY McMILLAN: A handprint.
AMY GOODMAN : —the shape of a hand. Black and blue, the shape of a hand.
CECILY McMILLAN: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN : That is above your right breast. And then your arms. Your arms are black and blue around both elbows. You&#8217;ve got finger marks of black and blue on both arms. And you&#8217;re clearly—
CECILY McMILLAN: My back.
AMY GOODMAN : —in a lot of pain on your back, and we can&#8217;t show those bruises now. Your ribs—what happened?
CECILY McMILLAN: My ribs are really bruised.
AMY GOODMAN : What happened to you? You went out on Saturday, six-month anniversary of Occupy, with hundreds of other people to Zuccotti. And what took place?
CECILY McMILLAN: Like I said, I haven&#8217;t seen any of the videos yet. I ended a 40-something-hour stay in jail and ended up with all these bruises. I mean, that&#8217;s—I have an open case, so I can&#8217;t talk more about it, and I&#8217;m sure you can tell that it would be difficult for me to remember some things. But I have these.
AMY GOODMAN : Why were you there?
CECILY McMILLAN: Well, I&#8217;ve been involved in Occupy Wall Street since August, in the planning stages. I think that earlier the year before—or, earlier last year, I was involved in Madison. And growing up in the South, my grandfather is a union rep, and I&#8217;ve seen him go into work and come home and go into work and go home, and lose battle after battle. And, you know, to be in Wisconsin and to see the strength and solidarity of people who will stand and fight for each other, who will stand in solidarity for each other, that lit a fire in me.
AMY GOODMAN : I mean, what has taken place, your story, the seeing you on the ground, people talking about the seizure, other protesters yelling to the police to get you help as you were flopping on the ground. What happened? Did the police get you help? And what caused all of these black and blue marks and your ribs cracked?
CECILY McMILLAN: I can&#8217;t—I can&#8217;t really explain what happened. I know that I kept waking up places.
AMY GOODMAN : So they—an ambulance finally brought you to the hospital, but then you were brought to jail?
CECILY McMILLAN: Uh-huh.
AMY GOODMAN : And held for how long?
CECILY McMILLAN: I don&#8217;t know how long. I mean, there weren&#8217;t clocks. We were in a very—
AMY GOODMAN : Were you able to call family or a lawyer?
CECILY McMILLAN: No.
AMY GOODMAN : Did you ask?
CECILY McMILLAN: I asked probably about three times every hour that I was in jail.
AMY GOODMAN : Altogether, you were away for more than what? Something like 40 hours?
CECILY McMILLAN: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN : You asked to speak to a lawyer. You couldn&#8217;t. Did you—when they brought you back to jail from the hospital, did you ask to go back to the hospital?
CECILY McMILLAN: Yeah. And they tried to dissuade the paramedics from taking me for about an hour and a half, until I was able to go back to the hospital. And then I went to the hospital and then the jail, and then the hospital and then the jail, and then another jail. And I couldn&#8217;t call a lawyer, or I—they wouldn&#8217;t tell me what my charges were. And I didn&#8217;t know where I was.
AMY GOODMAN : You went back into the—this was all on Saturday. Sunday, Monday, you&#8217;re arraigned. And the judge said he would—
CECILY McMILLAN: This was into Sunday.
AMY GOODMAN : Into Sunday.
CECILY McMILLAN: So I was just being moved around in various police cars and—
AMY GOODMAN : You went back to the hospital yesterday?
CECILY McMILLAN: Oh, I&#8217;ve been to the hospital every day.
AMY GOODMAN : And what did they say yesterday?
CECILY McMILLAN: They finally cleared me of a concussion, so that I can be prescribed sleep aids, because up until last night I had been waking up every 15 minutes to half-an-hour sweating and with night terrors. So, it was very maddening.
AMY GOODMAN : We&#8217;ve also turned off the monitors, because you said you couldn&#8217;t see the footage. Why?
CECILY McMILLAN: The footage?
AMY GOODMAN : Any kind of footage, you didn&#8217;t want to see.
CECILY McMILLAN: Well, my friends had told me that I might want to refrain from watching it, because some of them had cried or even gotten sick when watching it. And my therapist has said that if I were to watch any of the footage, it might trigger further psychological damage.
AMY GOODMAN : Meghan Maurus, how is it that your client, that Cecily McMillan, was not able to call a lawyer from jail, that she was in hospital, she was in jail, she was then sent back to the hospital, but she is not in communication with—basically held incommunicado?
MEGHAN MAURUS : Sure. I mean, you know, and we&#8217;re still—I think, from both of our ends, we&#8217;re piecing together exactly not only the specific time line, but what exactly happened. From our end, I am both a private attorney, but I also am working for the National Lawyers Guild, and we track every arrest. So we knew of Cecily&#8217;s arrest and spent much of Sunday and Monday trying to find her and trying to get a hold of her. So, it was not without effort on the part of myself, as the attorney, and one person working with me, as well as the National Lawyers Guild, to get a hold of her. So the specifics of who refused that and why and when, we&#8217;ll have to piece together later, but—
AMY GOODMAN : This was a peaceful protest.
CECILY McMILLAN: Yeah, and I&#8217;ve had—I mean, I have been an activist, for at least some time now. I&#8217;ve been active since my first—the first anti-Bush protest in Atlanta my senior year, with Student Political Action Club. And I&#8217;ve always had a longstanding commitment to peaceful protest. And I released a statement yesterday reiterating my commitment to nonviolent civil disobedience and affirming my innocence. And I really have cautioned people to remain nonviolent, and not only that, but for activists to undergo nonviolent trainings, such was done in the civil rights movement, not because anybody at Occupy is violent, but because I think it&#8217;s very easy to manipulate circumstances to make you seem so. And I think that it&#8217;s—if we&#8217;re going to continue to garner the strength of the public, as we saw with the Million Hoodie March—that night was, I mean, phenomenal—then we&#8217;re going to have to remain nonviolent, because that&#8217;s the only way that we have unity.
AMY GOODMAN : Were you afraid to go into a protest like the Million Hoodie March after what had happened to you? That was just a few days after this weekend.
CECILY McMILLAN: Torn. I mean, the way that I have always gotten through the difficulties of the world that we live in is by committing myself solely to activism. And so, in this time, it&#8217;s so hard for me to sit and recover, sit and recover. But—
AMY GOODMAN : When you see the lines of police officers?
CECILY McMILLAN: Yes, when I saw the lines of police officers, I had to do what my therapist said—you know, the grass is green, the sky is blue—and reconfirm my place in reality and center myself. Yeah, no, I mean, there—I have come to the opinion that police are scary.
AMY GOODMAN : Why did you decide—this is an exclusive interview, you&#8217;re speaking out for the first time publicly—to do this?
CECILY McMILLAN: To come and speak?
AMY GOODMAN : To speak, yes.
CECILY McMILLAN: Well, I have received so many—so many emails and twitters and messages and phone calls, and people just really horrified about—
AMY GOODMAN : We have five seconds.
CECILY McMILLAN: —what happened to me, and I didn&#8217;t understand. But I just wanted to say that everybody keeps doing this to me. And I just want to do this to everybody.
AMY GOODMAN : Giving you a heart sign.
CECILY McMILLAN: Occupy love.
AMY GOODMAN : We are going to leave it there. Cecily McMillan, a Occupy Wall Street activist, injured by New York police as she protested on the six-month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street. And Meghan, thanks so much for joining us. AMYGOODMAN: Last weekend marked six months since the launch of Occupy Wall Street. Here in New York, a new occupation may be taking root in Union Square Park. Dozens are camping out there. Some claim the spot could be the movement’s new home base. On Saturday, hundreds rallied outside the first park the movement occupied, Zuccotti Park, now renamed Liberty Plaza. Police arrested 73 people.

Movement activists say police are adopting violent and intimidating tactics against them as they peacefully protest. They held a press conference Tuesday outside New York police headquarters. This is Occupy Wall Street activist, Jen Waller.

JENWALLER: It is when we speak out against the 1 percent and defy them by fighting for public space that we are brutalized. On Saturday night as I simply sat in a park, I was violently arrested with my friends and watched as bloodthirsty cops stomped on their faces, knelt on their necks, pulled them by their hair, and slammed them into windows. I watched as one friend was treated as a battering ram as they carried him into an MTA bus, slamming his head on every step and seat as they went along. I watched as a young woman’s rib was broken, as she hyperventilated, convulsed and seizured in the middle of the street.

AMYGOODMAN: That was last person that Jen Waller mentions, who suffered a seizure and broken rib after she was pulled from the crowd and arrested, is Occupy Wall Street activist Cecily McMillan. Police say she elbowed an officer in the head, giving him a swollen eye. She faces felony charges of assault and obstructing governmental administration. Cecily was released on Monday afternoon after a judge denied a request from the district attorney that bail be set at $20,000, and she’s joining us now for this exclusive interview.

Cecily McMillan is Northeast regional organizer for the Young Democratic Socialists of America and a graduate student at the New School for Social Research. We’re also joined by Meghan Maurus, Cecily’s attorney and mass defense coordinator at the New York City chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Cecily, you limped in here. You’re very bruised. You have a bruise over your left eye. And I can see, with your—the scoop neck of your T-shirt, you are scratched and it is black and blue. It is—

CECILY McMILLAN: A handprint.

AMYGOODMAN: —the shape of a hand. Black and blue, the shape of a hand.

CECILY McMILLAN: Yeah.

AMYGOODMAN: That is above your right breast. And then your arms. Your arms are black and blue around both elbows. You’ve got finger marks of black and blue on both arms. And you’re clearly—

CECILY McMILLAN: My back.

AMYGOODMAN: —in a lot of pain on your back, and we can’t show those bruises now. Your ribs—what happened?

CECILY McMILLAN: My ribs are really bruised.

AMYGOODMAN: What happened to you? You went out on Saturday, six-month anniversary of Occupy, with hundreds of other people to Zuccotti. And what took place?

CECILY McMILLAN: Like I said, I haven’t seen any of the videos yet. I ended a 40-something-hour stay in jail and ended up with all these bruises. I mean, that’s—I have an open case, so I can’t talk more about it, and I’m sure you can tell that it would be difficult for me to remember some things. But I have these.

AMYGOODMAN: Why were you there?

CECILY McMILLAN: Well, I’ve been involved in Occupy Wall Street since August, in the planning stages. I think that earlier the year before—or, earlier last year, I was involved in Madison. And growing up in the South, my grandfather is a union rep, and I’ve seen him go into work and come home and go into work and go home, and lose battle after battle. And, you know, to be in Wisconsin and to see the strength and solidarity of people who will stand and fight for each other, who will stand in solidarity for each other, that lit a fire in me.

AMYGOODMAN: I mean, what has taken place, your story, the seeing you on the ground, people talking about the seizure, other protesters yelling to the police to get you help as you were flopping on the ground. What happened? Did the police get you help? And what caused all of these black and blue marks and your ribs cracked?

CECILY McMILLAN: I can’t—I can’t really explain what happened. I know that I kept waking up places.

AMYGOODMAN: So they—an ambulance finally brought you to the hospital, but then you were brought to jail?

CECILY McMILLAN: Uh-huh.

AMYGOODMAN: And held for how long?

CECILY McMILLAN: I don’t know how long. I mean, there weren’t clocks. We were in a very—

AMYGOODMAN: Were you able to call family or a lawyer?

CECILY McMILLAN: No.

AMYGOODMAN: Did you ask?

CECILY McMILLAN: I asked probably about three times every hour that I was in jail.

AMYGOODMAN: Altogether, you were away for more than what? Something like 40 hours?

CECILY McMILLAN: Yeah.

AMYGOODMAN: You asked to speak to a lawyer. You couldn’t. Did you—when they brought you back to jail from the hospital, did you ask to go back to the hospital?

CECILY McMILLAN: Yeah. And they tried to dissuade the paramedics from taking me for about an hour and a half, until I was able to go back to the hospital. And then I went to the hospital and then the jail, and then the hospital and then the jail, and then another jail. And I couldn’t call a lawyer, or I—they wouldn’t tell me what my charges were. And I didn’t know where I was.

AMYGOODMAN: You went back into the—this was all on Saturday. Sunday, Monday, you’re arraigned. And the judge said he would—

CECILY McMILLAN: This was into Sunday.

AMYGOODMAN: Into Sunday.

CECILY McMILLAN: So I was just being moved around in various police cars and—

AMYGOODMAN: You went back to the hospital yesterday?

CECILY McMILLAN: Oh, I’ve been to the hospital every day.

AMYGOODMAN: And what did they say yesterday?

CECILY McMILLAN: They finally cleared me of a concussion, so that I can be prescribed sleep aids, because up until last night I had been waking up every 15 minutes to half-an-hour sweating and with night terrors. So, it was very maddening.

AMYGOODMAN: We’ve also turned off the monitors, because you said you couldn’t see the footage. Why?

CECILY McMILLAN: The footage?

AMYGOODMAN: Any kind of footage, you didn’t want to see.

CECILY McMILLAN: Well, my friends had told me that I might want to refrain from watching it, because some of them had cried or even gotten sick when watching it. And my therapist has said that if I were to watch any of the footage, it might trigger further psychological damage.

AMYGOODMAN: Meghan Maurus, how is it that your client, that Cecily McMillan, was not able to call a lawyer from jail, that she was in hospital, she was in jail, she was then sent back to the hospital, but she is not in communication with—basically held incommunicado?

MEGHANMAURUS: Sure. I mean, you know, and we’re still—I think, from both of our ends, we’re piecing together exactly not only the specific time line, but what exactly happened. From our end, I am both a private attorney, but I also am working for the National Lawyers Guild, and we track every arrest. So we knew of Cecily’s arrest and spent much of Sunday and Monday trying to find her and trying to get a hold of her. So, it was not without effort on the part of myself, as the attorney, and one person working with me, as well as the National Lawyers Guild, to get a hold of her. So the specifics of who refused that and why and when, we’ll have to piece together later, but—

AMYGOODMAN: This was a peaceful protest.

CECILY McMILLAN: Yeah, and I’ve had—I mean, I have been an activist, for at least some time now. I’ve been active since my first—the first anti-Bush protest in Atlanta my senior year, with Student Political Action Club. And I’ve always had a longstanding commitment to peaceful protest. And I released a statement yesterday reiterating my commitment to nonviolent civil disobedience and affirming my innocence. And I really have cautioned people to remain nonviolent, and not only that, but for activists to undergo nonviolent trainings, such was done in the civil rights movement, not because anybody at Occupy is violent, but because I think it’s very easy to manipulate circumstances to make you seem so. And I think that it’s—if we’re going to continue to garner the strength of the public, as we saw with the Million Hoodie March—that night was, I mean, phenomenal—then we’re going to have to remain nonviolent, because that’s the only way that we have unity.

AMYGOODMAN: Were you afraid to go into a protest like the Million Hoodie March after what had happened to you? That was just a few days after this weekend.

CECILY McMILLAN: Torn. I mean, the way that I have always gotten through the difficulties of the world that we live in is by committing myself solely to activism. And so, in this time, it’s so hard for me to sit and recover, sit and recover. But—

AMYGOODMAN: When you see the lines of police officers?

CECILY McMILLAN: Yes, when I saw the lines of police officers, I had to do what my therapist said—you know, the grass is green, the sky is blue—and reconfirm my place in reality and center myself. Yeah, no, I mean, there—I have come to the opinion that police are scary.

AMYGOODMAN: Why did you decide—this is an exclusive interview, you’re speaking out for the first time publicly—to do this?

CECILY McMILLAN: To come and speak?

AMYGOODMAN: To speak, yes.

CECILY McMILLAN: Well, I have received so many—so many emails and twitters and messages and phone calls, and people just really horrified about—

AMYGOODMAN: We have five seconds.

CECILY McMILLAN: —what happened to me, and I didn’t understand. But I just wanted to say that everybody keeps doing this to me. And I just want to do this to everybody.

AMYGOODMAN: Giving you a heart sign.

CECILY McMILLAN: Occupy love.

AMYGOODMAN: We are going to leave it there. Cecily McMillan, a Occupy Wall Street activist, injured by New York police as she protested on the six-month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street. And Meghan, thanks so much for joining us.

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Fri, 23 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0400New Yorkers Call for Justice at Million Hoodie March for Trayvon Martinhttp://www.democracynow.org/blog/2012/3/22/new_yorkers_call_for_justice_in_million_hoodie_march_for_trayvon_martin
tag:democracynow.org,2012-03-22:blog/40b4ef Thousands of New Yorkers chanted &quot;we want arrests&quot; as Trayvon Martin&#8217;s parents joined them for a protest calling on police to arrest George Zimmerman, the man who shot and killed their unarmed 17-year-old son but has yet to be arrested. These are some of the voices of the protesters, many of whom wore hooded sweatshirts and called for an end to racial profiling.
PROTESTERS : Trayvon Martin could have been my son! Trayvon Martin could have been my son! Trayvon Martin could have been my son! Trayvon Martin could have been my son!
JAMIE GATES : Jamie Gates, Brooklyn, New York.
RENÉE FELTZ : Tell me why you&#8217;re out here today.
JAMIE GATES : Support a cause. That could have been me. That could have been my son. That could have been my brother. Justice needs to be served. That man should have been arrested.
PROTESTERS : We are Trayvon Martin! We are Trayvon Martin!
RAHEL TEKA : My name is Rahel Teka. I&#8217;m from Minneaopolis through Ethiopia. I&#8217;m here because the death of Trayvon Martin isn&#8217;t specific to his family. It&#8217;s not specific to Florida. It&#8217;s something that happens every day in this country, and it&#8217;s something which is ignored or is given attention for a week and then swept under the rug. So I think, through events like this, we can bring attention not only to Trayvon Martin and not only to the injustices in Florida, but across this country and throughout this world.
PROTESTER : What do we want?
PROTESTERS : Justice!
PROTESTER : When do we want it?
PROTESTERS : Now!
PROTESTER : What do we want?
PROTESTERS : Justice!
PROTESTER : When do we want it?
PROTESTERS : Now!
PROTESTER : What do we want?
PROTESTERS : Justice!
PROTESTER : When do we want it?
PROTESTERS : Now!
GRACE HAMLER : My name is Grace Hamler, and I&#8217;m from Harlem.
VICTORIA CHIRAC : My name is Victoria Chirac [phon.], and I&#8217;m from the Bronx.
RENÉE FELTZ : And I see this is a family affair for you. Can you tell us who you brought with you and why you&#8217;re out here?
GRACE HAMLER : I&#8217;m here with my grandchildren. This is my granddaughter. My daughter is over there with my grandson. And we&#8217;re here because of Trayvon Martin. It could be my son. It could be my grandson, my nephew. Today it&#8217;s a stranger. Tomorrow it&#8217;s your son, your grandson, your nephew. We have to be out here. We have to participate. We have to gather up. We have to stand up for this type of violence against black youth.
RENÉE FELTZ : And how about you? What do you think?
VICTORIA CHIRAC : I think that it was just totally unnecessary. Just Skittles and iced tea, and he gets shot for nothing.
ELGIE : My name is Elgie.
RENÉE FELTZ : And how old are you?
ELGIE : Six.
RENÉE FELTZ : And what do you think about what happened to Trayvon Martin?
ELGIE : Well, it&#8217;s just hard stuff to believe.
PROTESTERS : Justice! Now!
CANDICE : My name is Candice. I&#8217;m 11. And I&#8217;m from the Bronx. We feel like the police are racist, because when a black man died for no reason, they didn&#8217;t do anything, and they didn&#8217;t prosecute the killer.
FATOU WAGIH : My name is Fatou Wagih [phon.]. I&#8217;m from Bronx, and I&#8217;m 11. We&#8217;re here today because this is a national issue, and probably a worldwide one. I&#8217;m also wearing a hoodie, because he died with it and because we want to honor him today, which is what this protest is about.
AUNDRUS : My name is Aundrus, and I&#8217;m 12 years old. When I heard what happened, I was kind of confused, because at first—at first I thought it was a regular murder, but I wanted to know why it was like so, like, national. I went to Union Square, and I heard that he got—he got shot since he was wearing a hoodie that, like—like he was bad, he was suspicious. So, I think, like, maybe police might look at me suspiciously because of the color of my skin, and I&#8217;m wearing a hoodie.
PROTESTERS : We are Trayvon Martin! We are Trayvon Martin! We are Trayvon Martin! We are Trayvon Martin! We are Trayvon Martin!
Thousands of New Yorkers chanted "we want arrests" as Trayvon Martin’s parents joined them for a protest calling on police to arrest George Zimmerman, the man who shot and killed their unarmed 17-year-old son but has yet to be arrested. These are some of the voices of the protesters, many of whom wore hooded sweatshirts and called for an end to racial profiling.

PROTESTERS: Trayvon Martin could have been my son! Trayvon Martin could have been my son! Trayvon Martin could have been my son! Trayvon Martin could have been my son!

JAMIEGATES: Jamie Gates, Brooklyn, New York.

RENÉE FELTZ: Tell me why you’re out here today.

JAMIEGATES: Support a cause. That could have been me. That could have been my son. That could have been my brother. Justice needs to be served. That man should have been arrested.

PROTESTERS: We are Trayvon Martin! We are Trayvon Martin!

RAHELTEKA: My name is Rahel Teka. I’m from Minneaopolis through Ethiopia. I’m here because the death of Trayvon Martin isn’t specific to his family. It’s not specific to Florida. It’s something that happens every day in this country, and it’s something which is ignored or is given attention for a week and then swept under the rug. So I think, through events like this, we can bring attention not only to Trayvon Martin and not only to the injustices in Florida, but across this country and throughout this world.

PROTESTER: What do we want?

PROTESTERS: Justice!

PROTESTER: When do we want it?

PROTESTERS: Now!

PROTESTER: What do we want?

PROTESTERS: Justice!

PROTESTER: When do we want it?

PROTESTERS: Now!

PROTESTER: What do we want?

PROTESTERS: Justice!

PROTESTER: When do we want it?

PROTESTERS: Now!

GRACEHAMLER: My name is Grace Hamler, and I’m from Harlem.

VICTORIACHIRAC: My name is Victoria Chirac [phon.], and I’m from the Bronx.

RENÉE FELTZ: And I see this is a family affair for you. Can you tell us who you brought with you and why you’re out here?

GRACEHAMLER: I’m here with my grandchildren. This is my granddaughter. My daughter is over there with my grandson. And we’re here because of Trayvon Martin. It could be my son. It could be my grandson, my nephew. Today it’s a stranger. Tomorrow it’s your son, your grandson, your nephew. We have to be out here. We have to participate. We have to gather up. We have to stand up for this type of violence against black youth.

RENÉE FELTZ: And how about you? What do you think?

VICTORIACHIRAC: I think that it was just totally unnecessary. Just Skittles and iced tea, and he gets shot for nothing.

ELGIE: My name is Elgie.

RENÉE FELTZ: And how old are you?

ELGIE: Six.

RENÉE FELTZ: And what do you think about what happened to Trayvon Martin?

ELGIE: Well, it’s just hard stuff to believe.

PROTESTERS: Justice! Now!

CANDICE: My name is Candice. I’m 11. And I’m from the Bronx. We feel like the police are racist, because when a black man died for no reason, they didn’t do anything, and they didn’t prosecute the killer.

FATOUWAGIH: My name is Fatou Wagih [phon.]. I’m from Bronx, and I’m 11. We’re here today because this is a national issue, and probably a worldwide one. I’m also wearing a hoodie, because he died with it and because we want to honor him today, which is what this protest is about.

AUNDRUS: My name is Aundrus, and I’m 12 years old. When I heard what happened, I was kind of confused, because at first—at first I thought it was a regular murder, but I wanted to know why it was like so, like, national. I went to Union Square, and I heard that he got—he got shot since he was wearing a hoodie that, like—like he was bad, he was suspicious. So, I think, like, maybe police might look at me suspiciously because of the color of my skin, and I’m wearing a hoodie.

PROTESTERS: We are Trayvon Martin! We are Trayvon Martin! We are Trayvon Martin! We are Trayvon Martin! We are Trayvon Martin!

]]>
Thu, 22 Mar 2012 11:28:00 -0400New Yorkers Call for Justice at Million Hoodie March for Trayvon Martin Thousands of New Yorkers chanted &quot;we want arrests&quot; as Trayvon Martin&#8217;s parents joined them for a protest calling on police to arrest George Zimmerman, the man who shot and killed their unarmed 17-year-old son but has yet to be arrested. These are some of the voices of the protesters, many of whom wore hooded sweatshirts and called for an end to racial profiling.
PROTESTERS : Trayvon Martin could have been my son! Trayvon Martin could have been my son! Trayvon Martin could have been my son! Trayvon Martin could have been my son!
JAMIE GATES : Jamie Gates, Brooklyn, New York.
RENÉE FELTZ : Tell me why you&#8217;re out here today.
JAMIE GATES : Support a cause. That could have been me. That could have been my son. That could have been my brother. Justice needs to be served. That man should have been arrested.
PROTESTERS : We are Trayvon Martin! We are Trayvon Martin!
RAHEL TEKA : My name is Rahel Teka. I&#8217;m from Minneaopolis through Ethiopia. I&#8217;m here because the death of Trayvon Martin isn&#8217;t specific to his family. It&#8217;s not specific to Florida. It&#8217;s something that happens every day in this country, and it&#8217;s something which is ignored or is given attention for a week and then swept under the rug. So I think, through events like this, we can bring attention not only to Trayvon Martin and not only to the injustices in Florida, but across this country and throughout this world.
PROTESTER : What do we want?
PROTESTERS : Justice!
PROTESTER : When do we want it?
PROTESTERS : Now!
PROTESTER : What do we want?
PROTESTERS : Justice!
PROTESTER : When do we want it?
PROTESTERS : Now!
PROTESTER : What do we want?
PROTESTERS : Justice!
PROTESTER : When do we want it?
PROTESTERS : Now!
GRACE HAMLER : My name is Grace Hamler, and I&#8217;m from Harlem.
VICTORIA CHIRAC : My name is Victoria Chirac [phon.], and I&#8217;m from the Bronx.
RENÉE FELTZ : And I see this is a family affair for you. Can you tell us who you brought with you and why you&#8217;re out here?
GRACE HAMLER : I&#8217;m here with my grandchildren. This is my granddaughter. My daughter is over there with my grandson. And we&#8217;re here because of Trayvon Martin. It could be my son. It could be my grandson, my nephew. Today it&#8217;s a stranger. Tomorrow it&#8217;s your son, your grandson, your nephew. We have to be out here. We have to participate. We have to gather up. We have to stand up for this type of violence against black youth.
RENÉE FELTZ : And how about you? What do you think?
VICTORIA CHIRAC : I think that it was just totally unnecessary. Just Skittles and iced tea, and he gets shot for nothing.
ELGIE : My name is Elgie.
RENÉE FELTZ : And how old are you?
ELGIE : Six.
RENÉE FELTZ : And what do you think about what happened to Trayvon Martin?
ELGIE : Well, it&#8217;s just hard stuff to believe.
PROTESTERS : Justice! Now!
CANDICE : My name is Candice. I&#8217;m 11. And I&#8217;m from the Bronx. We feel like the police are racist, because when a black man died for no reason, they didn&#8217;t do anything, and they didn&#8217;t prosecute the killer.
FATOU WAGIH : My name is Fatou Wagih [phon.]. I&#8217;m from Bronx, and I&#8217;m 11. We&#8217;re here today because this is a national issue, and probably a worldwide one. I&#8217;m also wearing a hoodie, because he died with it and because we want to honor him today, which is what this protest is about.
AUNDRUS : My name is Aundrus, and I&#8217;m 12 years old. When I heard what happened, I was kind of confused, because at first—at first I thought it was a regular murder, but I wanted to know why it was like so, like, national. I went to Union Square, and I heard that he got—he got shot since he was wearing a hoodie that, like—like he was bad, he was suspicious. So, I think, like, maybe police might look at me suspiciously because of the color of my skin, and I&#8217;m wearing a hoodie.
PROTESTERS : We are Trayvon Martin! We are Trayvon Martin! We are Trayvon Martin! We are Trayvon Martin! We are Trayvon Martin! nonadulttv-gDemocracy Now!NewsNew Yorkers Call for Justice at Million Hoodie March for Trayvon Martin Thousands of New Yorkers chanted &quot;we want arrests&quot; as Trayvon Martin&#8217;s parents joined them for a protest calling on police to arrest George Zimmerman, the man who shot and killed their unarmed 17-year-old son but has yet to be arrested. These are some of the voices of the protesters, many of whom wore hooded sweatshirts and called for an end to racial profiling.
PROTESTERS : Trayvon Martin could have been my son! Trayvon Martin could have been my son! Trayvon Martin could have been my son! Trayvon Martin could have been my son!
JAMIE GATES : Jamie Gates, Brooklyn, New York.
RENÉE FELTZ : Tell me why you&#8217;re out here today.
JAMIE GATES : Support a cause. That could have been me. That could have been my son. That could have been my brother. Justice needs to be served. That man should have been arrested.
PROTESTERS : We are Trayvon Martin! We are Trayvon Martin!
RAHEL TEKA : My name is Rahel Teka. I&#8217;m from Minneaopolis through Ethiopia. I&#8217;m here because the death of Trayvon Martin isn&#8217;t specific to his family. It&#8217;s not specific to Florida. It&#8217;s something that happens every day in this country, and it&#8217;s something which is ignored or is given attention for a week and then swept under the rug. So I think, through events like this, we can bring attention not only to Trayvon Martin and not only to the injustices in Florida, but across this country and throughout this world.
PROTESTER : What do we want?
PROTESTERS : Justice!
PROTESTER : When do we want it?
PROTESTERS : Now!
PROTESTER : What do we want?
PROTESTERS : Justice!
PROTESTER : When do we want it?
PROTESTERS : Now!
PROTESTER : What do we want?
PROTESTERS : Justice!
PROTESTER : When do we want it?
PROTESTERS : Now!
GRACE HAMLER : My name is Grace Hamler, and I&#8217;m from Harlem.
VICTORIA CHIRAC : My name is Victoria Chirac [phon.], and I&#8217;m from the Bronx.
RENÉE FELTZ : And I see this is a family affair for you. Can you tell us who you brought with you and why you&#8217;re out here?
GRACE HAMLER : I&#8217;m here with my grandchildren. This is my granddaughter. My daughter is over there with my grandson. And we&#8217;re here because of Trayvon Martin. It could be my son. It could be my grandson, my nephew. Today it&#8217;s a stranger. Tomorrow it&#8217;s your son, your grandson, your nephew. We have to be out here. We have to participate. We have to gather up. We have to stand up for this type of violence against black youth.
RENÉE FELTZ : And how about you? What do you think?
VICTORIA CHIRAC : I think that it was just totally unnecessary. Just Skittles and iced tea, and he gets shot for nothing.
ELGIE : My name is Elgie.
RENÉE FELTZ : And how old are you?
ELGIE : Six.
RENÉE FELTZ : And what do you think about what happened to Trayvon Martin?
ELGIE : Well, it&#8217;s just hard stuff to believe.
PROTESTERS : Justice! Now!
CANDICE : My name is Candice. I&#8217;m 11. And I&#8217;m from the Bronx. We feel like the police are racist, because when a black man died for no reason, they didn&#8217;t do anything, and they didn&#8217;t prosecute the killer.
FATOU WAGIH : My name is Fatou Wagih [phon.]. I&#8217;m from Bronx, and I&#8217;m 11. We&#8217;re here today because this is a national issue, and probably a worldwide one. I&#8217;m also wearing a hoodie, because he died with it and because we want to honor him today, which is what this protest is about.
AUNDRUS : My name is Aundrus, and I&#8217;m 12 years old. When I heard what happened, I was kind of confused, because at first—at first I thought it was a regular murder, but I wanted to know why it was like so, like, national. I went to Union Square, and I heard that he got—he got shot since he was wearing a hoodie that, like—like he was bad, he was suspicious. So, I think, like, maybe police might look at me suspiciously because of the color of my skin, and I&#8217;m wearing a hoodie.
PROTESTERS : We are Trayvon Martin! We are Trayvon Martin! We are Trayvon Martin! We are Trayvon Martin! We are Trayvon Martin! nonadulttv-gDemocracy Now!NewsPolice Arrest 73 in Occupy Wall Street Crackdown as Protesters Mark Six Months Since Uprising Beganhttp://www.democracynow.org/2012/3/19/police_arrest_73_in_occupy_wall
tag:democracynow.org,2012-03-19:en/story/600774 AMY GOODMAN : This weekend marked six months since the launch of the Occupy Wall Street movement, which began last September 17th and launched protests around the world that gave voice to &quot;the 99 percent.&quot; Activists in New York City marked the occasion by attempting to reoccupy the movement&#8217;s birthplace: Zuccotti Park, renamed &quot;Liberty Plaza.&quot; A protest there Saturday drew more than hundreds of people, and included street theater and dancing.
But police were also on the scene and appeared determined to stop any attempts to re-establish the Occupy encampment. At least 73 people were arrested. Many reported excessive use of force by officers with the New York Police Department. This is a protester describing what happened after activists tried to set up tents in Zuccotti Park Saturday night.
PROTESTER : Some people wanted to reoccupy the park, so people were out here with their sleeping bags, and there were a few tents. The officers basically came into the park and smashed the tarp down that people were lying under, and they began trying to arrest people.
AMY GOODMAN : In one widely reported incident, a young woman suffered a seizure after she was pulled from the crowd and arrested. Witnesses say police initially ignored Cecily McMillan as she flopped about on the sidewalk with her hands zip-tied behind her back, but she was eventually taken away in an ambulance.
Meanwhile, not far from the park, thousands of activists and intellectuals gathered at the Left Forum this weekend to discuss the theme &quot;Occupying the System.&quot; Renowned independent filmmaker and activist Michael Moore headlined the event Saturday. He said he had never seen a movement spread with greater speed than Occupy Wall Street.
MICHAEL MOORE : I have never seen a political or a social movement catch fire this fast than this one. And, you know, I&#8217;m in my fifties, so I&#8217;ve lived through enough of them and knew about those that came before me. And what&#8217;s so incredible about this movement is that people have—it was—really, it hasn&#8217;t taken six months. It really just took a few weeks before they started to take polls of people, Americans, and they found that the majority of Americans supported the principles of the Occupy movement. This was back in October.
And then they took another poll, and it said 72 percent of the American public believes taxes should be raised on the rich. Seventy-two percent. I mean, I don&#8217;t think there was ever a poll that showed a majority in favor of raising taxes on the rich, because up until recently, a vast majority of our fellow Americans believed in the Horatio Alger theory, that anyone in America can make it, it&#8217;s an even and level playing field. And now they—the majority, at least, vast majority—know that that&#8217;s a lie. They know that there&#8217;s no truth to that whatsoever. They know that the game is rigged. And they know that they don&#8217;t have the same wherewithal on that playing field that the wealthy have.
AMY GOODMAN : At the end of his speech, Michael Moore urged people to join the movement and go down to Zuccotti Park.
MICHAEL MOORE : I really want to encourage you to not let this moment slip by. Our ship has really come in. The spotlight is on Occupy Wall Street. And I think—I think this is our—this is our invitation to head over to Zuccotti Park. It&#8217;s a 10-minute—it&#8217;s a 10-minute walk. Five minutes if you&#8217;re young. Huh?
AUDIENCE MEMBER : [inaudible]
MICHAEL MOORE : All right. So, go ahead, start the banner. And again, thank you, everybody, for coming here tonight. Let&#8217;s not—let&#8217;s not lose the moment. The moment is ours and our fellow Americans&#8217;. Thank you. Occupy Wall Street!
AMY GOODMAN : Hundreds heeded Michael Moore&#8217;s call and helped swell the ranks of the Occupy protest Saturday night. Democracy Now! correspondent and now Guardian reporter Ryan Devereaux tweeted, quote, &quot;Today&#8217;s events feel like any given day last fall with # OWS .&quot;
Well, Ryan joins us now to talk more about Occupy Wall Street. We&#8217;re also joined by two of the people who led a discussion at the Left Forum about strategic directions for the Occupy movement: Frances Fox Piven, professor of political science and sociology at The Graduate Center, City University of New York, author of Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America , a frequent target of right-wing pundits; and in D.C., we&#8217;re joined by Stephen Lerner, the architect of the Justice for Janitors campaign, on the executive board of the Service Employees International Union, has been working with labor and community groups nationally on how to hold Wall Street accountable.
We welcome you all to Democracy Now! Ryan, let&#8217;s begin with you with an update on what took place on Saturday night.
RYAN DEVEREAUX : Well, on Saturday night, protesters had been in the park since about 1:00 in the afternoon, and it had been a day that had been marked with some tension, but also a lot of joy. People were really enjoying the opportunity to be in the park again to talk to each other, to meet new people and discuss issues. At about 11:30, though, a representative from Brookfield Properties, which owns Zuccotti Park, said that he was working with Brookfield security, made an announcement that people had to leave the park because they were violating the rules. I asked him what rules they were violating. He said that they had brought in sleeping equipment and erected structures in the park, and these were violations of the rules. He made this announcement via megaphone, but he was drowned out by protesters. And I should say that the structures that I witnessed were a tarp that was strung over a cord tied between two trees, and protesters also had—they had symbolic tents up on polls that they were carrying around. It wasn&#8217;t as if they had created a tent city in the park or anything like that.
But the protesters decided to stand their ground, and the police moved in, in lieu of the Brookfield security. And it was rows upon rows of police officers coming into the park through the front entrance, coming down the stairs. And the protesters, dozens of them who chose to stand their ground, were gathered in the center of the park. Their arms and legs were locked. They were sitting in planters right there in the middle of Zuccotti. And the police moved in to break them apart. It was a violent scene, by just about all accounts, police ripping protesters apart from each other, people being hit, people being dragged across the ground, multiple reports of young women being pulled by their hair across the ground. I saw a young woman writhing on the ground in pain with a white-shirted police officer standing over the top of her telling her to shut up. It was really gruesome. I talked to a lot of people who were there on the eviction on November 15th, and they said that the course of the day, you know, the interactions with the police and the protesters were the most violent they had seen. Following people being pulled out of the park, you know, dozens of arrests, there was a winding march through the city, which resulted in, you know, a handful of—a handful more arrests.
What was really disturbing for a lot of people that were there on the scene was one incident with a young woman named Cecily McMillan who, witnesses say, suffered from a seizure. She was handcuffed in the street sidewalk area near the entrance to the park. She was on the ground. Videotape seems to show her convulsing. You can hear people screaming to help her, to call 911. Witnesses that were there said that it took approximately 22 to 23 minutes for an ambulance to arrive. People were really disturbed that there were hundreds of police officers there and no paramedics, and also disturbed by the fact that you see a number of police officers standing around this young woman as she&#8217;s convulsing, and no one seems to be doing much of anything. I spoke to a young man who said he was a paramedic in—an EMT in Florida, who was disgusted by the way that McMillan was treated. He said her head wasn&#8217;t supported. Numerous witnesses that I spoke to said that her head was bouncing off the concrete. The paramedics said that she could have easily died. McMillan was taken from the scene by ambulance to a local hospital and then transferred to police custody.
AMY GOODMAN : Did they take the handcuffs off of her?
RYAN DEVEREAUX : Eventually they took the handcuffs off, but it was quite some time she was on the ground convulsing in handcuffs. And people were screaming to let her loose, take the handcuffs off, stabilize her. People felt like it didn&#8217;t seem like the officers knew what they were—what they needed to do to handle her.
AMY GOODMAN : Is she in jail now or the hospital?
RYAN DEVEREAUX : She&#8217;s in jail now, as far as we know. Attorneys with the National Lawyers Guild are particularly concerned because, despite repeated efforts, they haven&#8217;t been able to speak to her. These attorneys have told me that in most cases, it would be easy for them to speak to a potential client, to speak to someone who is—you know, who&#8217;s in police custody but has been hospitalized. But those efforts have been stopped. It&#8217;s unclear exactly why. The police have released a video that they claim shows McMillan hitting an officer, hitting a police officer, shortly before her seizure. I don&#8217;t fully understand how that relates to her care or, you know, why it was that she wasn&#8217;t taken to the hospital. It seems irrelevant, and it doesn&#8217;t seem to address the issue of why she hasn&#8217;t been able to speak to an attorney. We do know that she is charged with a felony, but it is unclear what exactly those charges are, because, again, the attorneys haven&#8217;t been able to speak to her.
AMY GOODMAN : But she was—eventually, an ambulance came?
RYAN DEVEREAUX : Eventually an ambulance came.
AMY GOODMAN : Speaking of healthcare, what happened to the Occupy medic?
RYAN DEVEREAUX : This was after protesters were cleared out of the park. An Occupy medic, who, by most accounts, from people that I spoke to, is a soft-spoken, pretty nice young guy, was grabbed by police for reasons that are unclear to me. He was directly in front of me at the moment that he was grabbed, and he was thrown into a glass door. Some people said that his head hit the door, but I was standing there, and I couldn&#8217;t tell what part of his body hit the door. But it was a massive crack left in this glass door. People were shocked at the force that was used. The young man, as he was being pulled away by police officers, looked me in the eye and said that he had been punched in the face. I asked photographers there on the scene. They said he had been punched in the face multiple times.
And this was something that, you know, repeated people—repeatedly I heard accounts of people who said that they had been hit in the face. I heard accounts of protesters saying that they were directly verbally threatened by police officers. I saw a high level of intimidation from a number of police officers towards protesters. And it should be said that there were police officers who seemed to be making an effort, or at least just trying to do their job, but it is the guys who go out of their way to not be like that that tend to stand out and that tend to scare people and tend to hurt people. And, you know, protesters were saying that this was really an ugly scene. The attorneys who were looking at cases that are developing out of these arrests are saying that they&#8217;re seeing more resisting arrest charges, which they tell me often sort of is code word for fighting with police officers or police officers beating someone up.
AMY GOODMAN : We&#8217;re going to go to break, and then we&#8217;re going to come back. Ryan Devereaux with The Guardian now, used to be a fellow here at Democracy Now! It&#8217;s great to have you back. We&#8217;ll also be joined by Frances Fox Piven and Stephen Lerner in a moment. AMYGOODMAN: This weekend marked six months since the launch of the Occupy Wall Street movement, which began last September 17th and launched protests around the world that gave voice to "the 99 percent." Activists in New York City marked the occasion by attempting to reoccupy the movement’s birthplace: Zuccotti Park, renamed "Liberty Plaza." A protest there Saturday drew more than hundreds of people, and included street theater and dancing.

But police were also on the scene and appeared determined to stop any attempts to re-establish the Occupy encampment. At least 73 people were arrested. Many reported excessive use of force by officers with the New York Police Department. This is a protester describing what happened after activists tried to set up tents in Zuccotti Park Saturday night.

PROTESTER: Some people wanted to reoccupy the park, so people were out here with their sleeping bags, and there were a few tents. The officers basically came into the park and smashed the tarp down that people were lying under, and they began trying to arrest people.

AMYGOODMAN: In one widely reported incident, a young woman suffered a seizure after she was pulled from the crowd and arrested. Witnesses say police initially ignored Cecily McMillan as she flopped about on the sidewalk with her hands zip-tied behind her back, but she was eventually taken away in an ambulance.

Meanwhile, not far from the park, thousands of activists and intellectuals gathered at the Left Forum this weekend to discuss the theme "Occupying the System." Renowned independent filmmaker and activist Michael Moore headlined the event Saturday. He said he had never seen a movement spread with greater speed than Occupy Wall Street.

MICHAELMOORE: I have never seen a political or a social movement catch fire this fast than this one. And, you know, I’m in my fifties, so I’ve lived through enough of them and knew about those that came before me. And what’s so incredible about this movement is that people have—it was—really, it hasn’t taken six months. It really just took a few weeks before they started to take polls of people, Americans, and they found that the majority of Americans supported the principles of the Occupy movement. This was back in October.

And then they took another poll, and it said 72 percent of the American public believes taxes should be raised on the rich. Seventy-two percent. I mean, I don’t think there was ever a poll that showed a majority in favor of raising taxes on the rich, because up until recently, a vast majority of our fellow Americans believed in the Horatio Alger theory, that anyone in America can make it, it’s an even and level playing field. And now they—the majority, at least, vast majority—know that that’s a lie. They know that there’s no truth to that whatsoever. They know that the game is rigged. And they know that they don’t have the same wherewithal on that playing field that the wealthy have.

AMYGOODMAN: At the end of his speech, Michael Moore urged people to join the movement and go down to Zuccotti Park.

MICHAELMOORE: I really want to encourage you to not let this moment slip by. Our ship has really come in. The spotlight is on Occupy Wall Street. And I think—I think this is our—this is our invitation to head over to Zuccotti Park. It’s a 10-minute—it’s a 10-minute walk. Five minutes if you’re young. Huh?

AMYGOODMAN: Hundreds heeded Michael Moore’s call and helped swell the ranks of the Occupy protest Saturday night. Democracy Now! correspondent and now Guardian reporter Ryan Devereaux tweeted, quote, "Today’s events feel like any given day last fall with #OWS."

Well, Ryan joins us now to talk more about Occupy Wall Street. We’re also joined by two of the people who led a discussion at the Left Forum about strategic directions for the Occupy movement: Frances Fox Piven, professor of political science and sociology at The Graduate Center, City University of New York, author of Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America, a frequent target of right-wing pundits; and in D.C., we’re joined by Stephen Lerner, the architect of the Justice for Janitors campaign, on the executive board of the Service Employees International Union, has been working with labor and community groups nationally on how to hold Wall Street accountable.

We welcome you all to Democracy Now! Ryan, let’s begin with you with an update on what took place on Saturday night.

RYANDEVEREAUX: Well, on Saturday night, protesters had been in the park since about 1:00 in the afternoon, and it had been a day that had been marked with some tension, but also a lot of joy. People were really enjoying the opportunity to be in the park again to talk to each other, to meet new people and discuss issues. At about 11:30, though, a representative from Brookfield Properties, which owns Zuccotti Park, said that he was working with Brookfield security, made an announcement that people had to leave the park because they were violating the rules. I asked him what rules they were violating. He said that they had brought in sleeping equipment and erected structures in the park, and these were violations of the rules. He made this announcement via megaphone, but he was drowned out by protesters. And I should say that the structures that I witnessed were a tarp that was strung over a cord tied between two trees, and protesters also had—they had symbolic tents up on polls that they were carrying around. It wasn’t as if they had created a tent city in the park or anything like that.

But the protesters decided to stand their ground, and the police moved in, in lieu of the Brookfield security. And it was rows upon rows of police officers coming into the park through the front entrance, coming down the stairs. And the protesters, dozens of them who chose to stand their ground, were gathered in the center of the park. Their arms and legs were locked. They were sitting in planters right there in the middle of Zuccotti. And the police moved in to break them apart. It was a violent scene, by just about all accounts, police ripping protesters apart from each other, people being hit, people being dragged across the ground, multiple reports of young women being pulled by their hair across the ground. I saw a young woman writhing on the ground in pain with a white-shirted police officer standing over the top of her telling her to shut up. It was really gruesome. I talked to a lot of people who were there on the eviction on November 15th, and they said that the course of the day, you know, the interactions with the police and the protesters were the most violent they had seen. Following people being pulled out of the park, you know, dozens of arrests, there was a winding march through the city, which resulted in, you know, a handful of—a handful more arrests.

What was really disturbing for a lot of people that were there on the scene was one incident with a young woman named Cecily McMillan who, witnesses say, suffered from a seizure. She was handcuffed in the street sidewalk area near the entrance to the park. She was on the ground. Videotape seems to show her convulsing. You can hear people screaming to help her, to call 911. Witnesses that were there said that it took approximately 22 to 23 minutes for an ambulance to arrive. People were really disturbed that there were hundreds of police officers there and no paramedics, and also disturbed by the fact that you see a number of police officers standing around this young woman as she’s convulsing, and no one seems to be doing much of anything. I spoke to a young man who said he was a paramedic in—an EMT in Florida, who was disgusted by the way that McMillan was treated. He said her head wasn’t supported. Numerous witnesses that I spoke to said that her head was bouncing off the concrete. The paramedics said that she could have easily died. McMillan was taken from the scene by ambulance to a local hospital and then transferred to police custody.

AMYGOODMAN: Did they take the handcuffs off of her?

RYANDEVEREAUX: Eventually they took the handcuffs off, but it was quite some time she was on the ground convulsing in handcuffs. And people were screaming to let her loose, take the handcuffs off, stabilize her. People felt like it didn’t seem like the officers knew what they were—what they needed to do to handle her.

AMYGOODMAN: Is she in jail now or the hospital?

RYANDEVEREAUX: She’s in jail now, as far as we know. Attorneys with the National Lawyers Guild are particularly concerned because, despite repeated efforts, they haven’t been able to speak to her. These attorneys have told me that in most cases, it would be easy for them to speak to a potential client, to speak to someone who is—you know, who’s in police custody but has been hospitalized. But those efforts have been stopped. It’s unclear exactly why. The police have released a video that they claim shows McMillan hitting an officer, hitting a police officer, shortly before her seizure. I don’t fully understand how that relates to her care or, you know, why it was that she wasn’t taken to the hospital. It seems irrelevant, and it doesn’t seem to address the issue of why she hasn’t been able to speak to an attorney. We do know that she is charged with a felony, but it is unclear what exactly those charges are, because, again, the attorneys haven’t been able to speak to her.

AMYGOODMAN: But she was—eventually, an ambulance came?

RYANDEVEREAUX: Eventually an ambulance came.

AMYGOODMAN: Speaking of healthcare, what happened to the Occupy medic?

RYANDEVEREAUX: This was after protesters were cleared out of the park. An Occupy medic, who, by most accounts, from people that I spoke to, is a soft-spoken, pretty nice young guy, was grabbed by police for reasons that are unclear to me. He was directly in front of me at the moment that he was grabbed, and he was thrown into a glass door. Some people said that his head hit the door, but I was standing there, and I couldn’t tell what part of his body hit the door. But it was a massive crack left in this glass door. People were shocked at the force that was used. The young man, as he was being pulled away by police officers, looked me in the eye and said that he had been punched in the face. I asked photographers there on the scene. They said he had been punched in the face multiple times.

And this was something that, you know, repeated people—repeatedly I heard accounts of people who said that they had been hit in the face. I heard accounts of protesters saying that they were directly verbally threatened by police officers. I saw a high level of intimidation from a number of police officers towards protesters. And it should be said that there were police officers who seemed to be making an effort, or at least just trying to do their job, but it is the guys who go out of their way to not be like that that tend to stand out and that tend to scare people and tend to hurt people. And, you know, protesters were saying that this was really an ugly scene. The attorneys who were looking at cases that are developing out of these arrests are saying that they’re seeing more resisting arrest charges, which they tell me often sort of is code word for fighting with police officers or police officers beating someone up.

AMYGOODMAN: We’re going to go to break, and then we’re going to come back. Ryan Devereaux with The Guardian now, used to be a fellow here at Democracy Now! It’s great to have you back. We’ll also be joined by Frances Fox Piven and Stephen Lerner in a moment.

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Mon, 19 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0400Egypt: Sharif Abdel Kouddous Reports from Cairo as Crowds Mark 1 Year of Revolution in Tahrir Squarehttp://www.democracynow.org/2012/1/25/egypt_sharif_abdel_kouddous_reports_from
tag:democracynow.org,2012-01-25:en/story/435d7d AMY GOODMAN : We go directly to Cairo. Nermeen?
NERMEEN SHAIKH : Tens of thousands of Egyptians are gathering in Tahrir Square to mark the first anniversary of the start of the revolution that ended Hosni Mubarak&#8217;s three-decade reign. Inspired by the uprising in Tunisia, tens of thousands of Egyptians took to the streets on January 25th, 2011. Over the following 18 days, the protests grew across Egypt despite a violent crackdown.
While Mubarak resigned on February 11th, the uprising is an unfinished revolution for many Egyptians. The Egyptian military remains in control one year later. In the first seven months of military rule, nearly 12,000 civilians were tried in military courts—more than the total number during the past three decades under Mubarak.
On Tuesday, the military announced a partial lifting of Egypt&#8217;s emergency laws, which have been in place since 1981. Military leader Mohamed Hussein Tantawi made the announcement in a nationally televised address.
MOHAMED HUSSEIN TANTAWI : [translated] Now that the people has voiced its word and has chosen its members of parliament, I have taken the decision to end the state of emergency throughout the republic, except when facing crimes committed by thugs. This decision will take effect as of the 25th of January, 2012.
AMY GOODMAN : Ahmed Maher, one of the founders of the April 6 Youth Movement, says the protesters and the military have different visions of the revolution that began a year ago today.
AHMED MAHER : [translated] After the difference became clear concerning vision of the revolution&#8217;s meaning between the youth and the military ruling council, the youth seized this revolution as being about changing the regime, as being about freedom, dignity, social justice and changing the whole regime. But only the military council sees the revolution simply as preventing the inheritance of the throne by Mubarak&#8217;s son and keeping the regime as intact. Of course, that is not what we want. So the protests increased in March and April. The raids in Tahrir Square started, the torture of some activists and many injuries. There was also the killing of protesters.
AMY GOODMAN : Joining us now in Cairo, Egypt, in a studio overlooking Tahrir Square, is Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous. He has covered the uprising for Democracy Now! for this entire last year, also now a fellow at The Nation Institute. In a moment, we&#8217;ll be joined by the HBO documentary makers who have just done a piece on—a documentary that will air tonight on Sharif covering the revolution.
Sharif, though, describe what you are seeing right now and where you are.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS : Well, Amy, I&#8217;m standing just on the outskirts of Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the Egyptian revolution. And as you can see behind me, it&#8217;s an absolutely packed day, that one year after this revolution began, it still is very much continuing.
What happened on January 25th was really an uprising that was 10 years in the making, a growing resistance movement to the Mubarak regime, to a regime that was characterized by a sprawling police apparatus that engaged in quashing of dissent and torture, a paralyzed body politic, and rampant corruption. And that uprising ignited on January 25th. People speak about the barrier of fear being broken, but I really think it was a lack of hope. And that was the gift that Tunisia gave to Egypt, was that here is the dream you can achieve, and here&#8217;s the hope that you can change, if you take to the streets. And so, that&#8217;s what—that&#8217;s what happened. People had hope that they could cause change, and they started this revolution on January 25th, one that really reverberated across the world, one that changed the way, I think, many people think about themselves as citizens in a country and in participatory democracy. And that revolution succeeded 18 days later in toppling Mubarak.
But what happened on February 11th wasn&#8217;t the end of the revolution. It was really only the beginning, because, as you mentioned, the Supreme Council of Armed Forces took control of the country on February 11th, led by Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, who was Mubarak&#8217;s loyal defense minister for 20 years. And what has happened over these past 12 months, as you can see behind me what&#8217;s happening now, is that the revolution has really progressed from this uprising against the Mubarak regime into a deeper struggle that is targeting the real backbone of modern autocracy in Egypt, which is the military, the regime that has ruled Egypt for the past 60 years, that enjoys a special political and economic autonomy outside of any kind of civilian control. And this is the regime that SCAF embodies. And so, the revolution has really become much more radical, I think, in targeting that aspect of Egyptian autocracy.
If you remember, right after the 18 days finished, the common chant in Tahrir was &quot;The people and the army are one hand,&quot; and the army was applauded for not firing on protesters, which is a dubious accolade in and of itself. But they enjoyed widespread popularity. And over the past 12 months, they&#8217;ve seen a real plummeting of authority, a plummeting of legitimacy, due to their really bumbling decision making over the course of the last 12 months in their transitional process, really erratic decision making, and a very—what&#8217;s been increasing crackdown on dissent, on protest and on the media. In the past three months alone, over a hundred people have been killed protesting, many of them in the square you see behind me. The bloodiest day of these past 12 months came at the hands of army soldiers, not of police. It was on October 9th, when army soldiers drove armored personnel carriers into a crowd of Coptic Christians and their supporters, killing 27 people in a single day.
So, while we&#8217;ve had this kind of crackdown and this more severe suppression of dissent, we&#8217;ve also seen growing resistance. So, as you mentioned, perhaps one of the most egregious things that the Supreme Council has done is put 12,000 civilians on military trial. These are really a big deterioration in basic due process rights. But perhaps the most successful grassroots campaign of 2011 was the &quot;No to Military Trials&quot; campaign. The practice has all but been abolished. An extra 2,000 people were just let go, who had been put on military trials today. We&#8217;ve also seen a burgeoning, growing independent media movement here that&#8217;s really blossoming and engaging in citizen journalism that is countering this clampdown on the media and countering a very vicious propaganda campaign by the SCAF . And so, what you&#8217;re seeing behind me is, I think, an embodiment of a revolution that is still going and still has a long way to go.
NERMEEN SHAIKH : Sharif, can you say what the response in Egypt has been to Tantawi&#8217;s announcement yesterday of a partial lifting of the state of emergency?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS : Well, that&#8217;s right. Tantawi went on the air yesterday and announced he would lift the state of emergency, but said except in cases of thuggery. So this is a very, very broad exception. Many protesters have been put on military trials over the past 12 months, being called thugs. So it gives them a broad—very broad leeway to exercise the law. It really reminds me of what Mubarak said in 2010 when he said he would only apply the emergency law in cases of terrorism or drug-related offenses. And, of course, as Human Rights Watch said in a statement, this really gives them the leeway to do whatever they want. I think it was seen largely as a way to try and quell the protests, to try and reduce their size, by giving some kind of concession. By releasing almost 2,000 prisoners who had been jailed in military trials, I think was a move, as well, to try and placate the crowd, and also the decision to have the first session of parliament happen two days before the anniversary of the revolution.
Of course, as we know, the Muslim Brotherhood is kingmaker in parliament, capturing about 47 percent of the seats. The ultra-conservative Salafi Nour party has about 25 percent. And a very distant third are an older liberal party called Wafd, and behind that, some of the newer liberal parties. But the parliament is seen as having wide legitimacy in Egypt. Many of the revolutionary youth boycotted the revolution—the elections, but it wasn&#8217;t a widespread boycott, by any means. The main charge of this parliament right now is to appoint a 100-member constituent assembly that will draft a constitution. Many people now, what they&#8217;re calling for, what they&#8217;re calling for in the streets, are for a quicker handover of power, saying that SCAF has—the Supreme Council has no right—no role anymore in the transitional process, now that we have an elected body. And so, they&#8217;re asking for a handover of power immediately.
AMY GOODMAN : We&#8217;re speaking to Democracy Now! &#39;s Sharif Abdel Kouddous. He&#39;s overlooking Tahrir Square in Cairo. When we come back, we&#8217;ll continue this discussion and also talk about a new HBO documentary that covered Sharif covering Tahrir in the first 18 days of Egypt&#8217;s unfinished revolution. Stay with us. AMYGOODMAN: We go directly to Cairo. Nermeen?

NERMEENSHAIKH: Tens of thousands of Egyptians are gathering in Tahrir Square to mark the first anniversary of the start of the revolution that ended Hosni Mubarak’s three-decade reign. Inspired by the uprising in Tunisia, tens of thousands of Egyptians took to the streets on January 25th, 2011. Over the following 18 days, the protests grew across Egypt despite a violent crackdown.

While Mubarak resigned on February 11th, the uprising is an unfinished revolution for many Egyptians. The Egyptian military remains in control one year later. In the first seven months of military rule, nearly 12,000 civilians were tried in military courts—more than the total number during the past three decades under Mubarak.

On Tuesday, the military announced a partial lifting of Egypt’s emergency laws, which have been in place since 1981. Military leader Mohamed Hussein Tantawi made the announcement in a nationally televised address.

MOHAMEDHUSSEINTANTAWI: [translated] Now that the people has voiced its word and has chosen its members of parliament, I have taken the decision to end the state of emergency throughout the republic, except when facing crimes committed by thugs. This decision will take effect as of the 25th of January, 2012.

AMYGOODMAN: Ahmed Maher, one of the founders of the April 6 Youth Movement, says the protesters and the military have different visions of the revolution that began a year ago today.

AHMEDMAHER: [translated] After the difference became clear concerning vision of the revolution’s meaning between the youth and the military ruling council, the youth seized this revolution as being about changing the regime, as being about freedom, dignity, social justice and changing the whole regime. But only the military council sees the revolution simply as preventing the inheritance of the throne by Mubarak’s son and keeping the regime as intact. Of course, that is not what we want. So the protests increased in March and April. The raids in Tahrir Square started, the torture of some activists and many injuries. There was also the killing of protesters.

AMYGOODMAN: Joining us now in Cairo, Egypt, in a studio overlooking Tahrir Square, is Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous. He has covered the uprising for Democracy Now! for this entire last year, also now a fellow at The Nation Institute. In a moment, we’ll be joined by the HBO documentary makers who have just done a piece on—a documentary that will air tonight on Sharif covering the revolution.

Sharif, though, describe what you are seeing right now and where you are.

SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS: Well, Amy, I’m standing just on the outskirts of Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the Egyptian revolution. And as you can see behind me, it’s an absolutely packed day, that one year after this revolution began, it still is very much continuing.

What happened on January 25th was really an uprising that was 10 years in the making, a growing resistance movement to the Mubarak regime, to a regime that was characterized by a sprawling police apparatus that engaged in quashing of dissent and torture, a paralyzed body politic, and rampant corruption. And that uprising ignited on January 25th. People speak about the barrier of fear being broken, but I really think it was a lack of hope. And that was the gift that Tunisia gave to Egypt, was that here is the dream you can achieve, and here’s the hope that you can change, if you take to the streets. And so, that’s what—that’s what happened. People had hope that they could cause change, and they started this revolution on January 25th, one that really reverberated across the world, one that changed the way, I think, many people think about themselves as citizens in a country and in participatory democracy. And that revolution succeeded 18 days later in toppling Mubarak.

But what happened on February 11th wasn’t the end of the revolution. It was really only the beginning, because, as you mentioned, the Supreme Council of Armed Forces took control of the country on February 11th, led by Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, who was Mubarak’s loyal defense minister for 20 years. And what has happened over these past 12 months, as you can see behind me what’s happening now, is that the revolution has really progressed from this uprising against the Mubarak regime into a deeper struggle that is targeting the real backbone of modern autocracy in Egypt, which is the military, the regime that has ruled Egypt for the past 60 years, that enjoys a special political and economic autonomy outside of any kind of civilian control. And this is the regime that SCAF embodies. And so, the revolution has really become much more radical, I think, in targeting that aspect of Egyptian autocracy.

If you remember, right after the 18 days finished, the common chant in Tahrir was "The people and the army are one hand," and the army was applauded for not firing on protesters, which is a dubious accolade in and of itself. But they enjoyed widespread popularity. And over the past 12 months, they’ve seen a real plummeting of authority, a plummeting of legitimacy, due to their really bumbling decision making over the course of the last 12 months in their transitional process, really erratic decision making, and a very—what’s been increasing crackdown on dissent, on protest and on the media. In the past three months alone, over a hundred people have been killed protesting, many of them in the square you see behind me. The bloodiest day of these past 12 months came at the hands of army soldiers, not of police. It was on October 9th, when army soldiers drove armored personnel carriers into a crowd of Coptic Christians and their supporters, killing 27 people in a single day.

So, while we’ve had this kind of crackdown and this more severe suppression of dissent, we’ve also seen growing resistance. So, as you mentioned, perhaps one of the most egregious things that the Supreme Council has done is put 12,000 civilians on military trial. These are really a big deterioration in basic due process rights. But perhaps the most successful grassroots campaign of 2011 was the "No to Military Trials" campaign. The practice has all but been abolished. An extra 2,000 people were just let go, who had been put on military trials today. We’ve also seen a burgeoning, growing independent media movement here that’s really blossoming and engaging in citizen journalism that is countering this clampdown on the media and countering a very vicious propaganda campaign by the SCAF. And so, what you’re seeing behind me is, I think, an embodiment of a revolution that is still going and still has a long way to go.

NERMEENSHAIKH: Sharif, can you say what the response in Egypt has been to Tantawi’s announcement yesterday of a partial lifting of the state of emergency?

SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS: Well, that’s right. Tantawi went on the air yesterday and announced he would lift the state of emergency, but said except in cases of thuggery. So this is a very, very broad exception. Many protesters have been put on military trials over the past 12 months, being called thugs. So it gives them a broad—very broad leeway to exercise the law. It really reminds me of what Mubarak said in 2010 when he said he would only apply the emergency law in cases of terrorism or drug-related offenses. And, of course, as Human Rights Watch said in a statement, this really gives them the leeway to do whatever they want. I think it was seen largely as a way to try and quell the protests, to try and reduce their size, by giving some kind of concession. By releasing almost 2,000 prisoners who had been jailed in military trials, I think was a move, as well, to try and placate the crowd, and also the decision to have the first session of parliament happen two days before the anniversary of the revolution.

Of course, as we know, the Muslim Brotherhood is kingmaker in parliament, capturing about 47 percent of the seats. The ultra-conservative Salafi Nour party has about 25 percent. And a very distant third are an older liberal party called Wafd, and behind that, some of the newer liberal parties. But the parliament is seen as having wide legitimacy in Egypt. Many of the revolutionary youth boycotted the revolution—the elections, but it wasn’t a widespread boycott, by any means. The main charge of this parliament right now is to appoint a 100-member constituent assembly that will draft a constitution. Many people now, what they’re calling for, what they’re calling for in the streets, are for a quicker handover of power, saying that SCAF has—the Supreme Council has no right—no role anymore in the transitional process, now that we have an elected body. And so, they’re asking for a handover of power immediately.

AMYGOODMAN: We’re speaking to Democracy Now!'s Sharif Abdel Kouddous. He's overlooking Tahrir Square in Cairo. When we come back, we’ll continue this discussion and also talk about a new HBO documentary that covered Sharif covering Tahrir in the first 18 days of Egypt’s unfinished revolution. Stay with us.

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Wed, 25 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0500"In Tahrir Square": HBO Doc on Egypt's Revolution Through Eyes of Democracy Now!'s Sharif Kouddoushttp://www.democracynow.org/2012/1/25/in_tahrir_square_hbo_doc_on
tag:democracynow.org,2012-01-25:en/story/083610 NERMEEN SHAIKH : Sharif, I want to turn back to some of your original reports that first aired on Democracy Now! during the Egyptian revolution last year.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS : In the middle of Tahrir, there&#8217;s a patch of grass where people have spent the night here for days. They&#8217;ve camped out. You can see some tents. Many have just slept out into the open. There&#8217;s rugs. And even though tens of thousands have been here refusing to leave Tahrir Square, there&#8217;s very little trash around. People are still picking up. And they are resolute. There&#8217;s people handing out water. There&#8217;s people handing out food. They&#8217;ve kept the place organized and clean. People are so determined to use this as their protest space here in Cairo.
NERMEEN SHAIKH : Days later, Sharif reported on the violent crackdown on anti-Mubarak protesters inside Tahrir Square.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS : We’re in an alleyway around the corner from Tahrir. And right over here is the hospital where many wounded are being cared for. [...] Inside this hospital, we see many wounded, different kinds of injuries—broken bones, broken hands, broken legs, many head injuries from rock throwing. And over here there&#8217;s a whole section for medical supplies that have been brought in. Some have been—many have been donated from people coming in to support this movement and support the struggle against Mubarak’s regime. It is quite a well-functioning clinic, but many, many have been wounded.
NERMEEN SHAIKH : The protests continued to grow in Tahrir Square, leading up to Hosni Mubarak&#8217;s resignation.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS : So, I&#8217;m standing on a stage here, one of the many stages here in Tahrir. There&#8217;s just a sea of people behind me, as you can see. They&#8217;re giving the peace sign. They&#8217;re giving a peace sign for freedom. They&#8217;re waiting for Mubarak to leave. There&#8217;s electricity in the air tonight. And you can see Tahrir is just packed with people. Shoulder to shoulder they&#8217;re standing.
HADLI : My name is Hadli, and I&#8217;m one of these people who are here to support the roses that came up in the Egyptian soil. And we&#8217;re here to protect them and to protect the revolution. And I&#8217;m one of the believers that we should never have any new leaders. The people is the leader. The young people are the leaders.
AMY GOODMAN : Democracy Now! &#39;s Sharif Abdel Kouddous is the central character in the new HBO documentary, _In Tahrir Square: 18 Days of Egypt&#39;s Unfinished Revolution_. The film chronicles the uprising through the reporting of Sharif and looks at what the protest meant for Sharif&#8217;s uncle, Mohamed Abdel Quddoos, a longtime Egyptian dissident who was arrested dozens of times by the Mubarak regime. This is an excerpt from the documentary that&#8217;s airing tonight, recorded as Sharif reported near Tahrir.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS : There&#8217;s the sound of gunfire in the air. The military has fired shots. The army is stationed in tanks just at the foot of the bridge. It&#8217;s really surreal to see this part of Cairo look like this. The Mubarak forces seem to be pulling back. They&#8217;re running back. People are cheering. They&#8217;re cheering as they retreat.
PROTESTER 1: [translated] I have a right to elect someone who will represent me in parliament, not someone who rules with thugs.
PROTESTER 2: This country should change! This is enough, enough playing games with us! We need freedom!
AMY GOODMAN : An excerpt from the new HBO documentary, In Tahrir Square: 18 Days of Egypt&#8217;s Unfinished Revolution . The film premieres tonight on HBO2 at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. The film was produced by Jon Alpert, Matt O&#8217;Neill of DCTV , Downtown Community Television, as well as Jacquie Soohen of Big Noise Films. Jacquie spent much of the past year in Egypt. All three filmmakers are joining us here in New York, with Sharif Abdel Kouddous himself in Cairo.
I want to start with Sharif in Cairo. Sharif, the experience of being covered covering the revolution?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS : Well, it was interesting. It certainly didn&#8217;t make things easier, but I think it really helped me also come to terms with how the revolution was affecting me personally as an Egyptian citizen, to, while I was covering the revolution, also kind of look within myself and how it was affecting myself. And you see at the end of the movie, I kind of break down and cry on the last day when Mubarak steps down. So, it was an interesting experience for me, but it was great having Jon and Matt and Jacquie here with me.
AMY GOODMAN : Jon Alpert, talk about why you chose to do this documentary, to head to Egypt and cover Sharif covering the revolution.
JON ALPERT : Well, actually Sheila Nevins of HBO is a fan of Democracy Now! , and she was watching Democracy Now! , saw Sharif and said, &quot;Oh, my goodness, this is a really charismatic, interesting, intelligent person,&quot; and called—sort of put together a dream team of me, Matt, Jacquie and Pat McMahon, the editor, and said, &quot;Why don&#8217;t you guys try to capture what&#8217;s going on by following Sharif?&quot;
AMY GOODMAN : Jacquie, as you look at these images right now, you were right there in the thick of things, when the camels moved in, when the thugs were attacking those in Tahrir. Talk about that experience as you were holding the camera.
JACQUIE SOOHEN : It was amazing to be in a place where I had been years before and see what was going on. You could never have imagined what happened in the streets those days. But the most amazing thing, I think, was the feeling of being in Tahrir Square, which is what the film captures, I think is what it does best. And that&#8217;s what people are celebrating today, and celebrating with the idea that this revolution hasn&#8217;t stopped, it&#8217;s continuing. And the violence that we saw in January and February was intense. But what has happened since, like Sharif mentioned, in October and November and December, it&#8217;s gotten even worse. And people are still out in the streets. They&#8217;re still fighting. Tahrir lives on.
AMY GOODMAN : Thus, Matt, the subtitle about the &quot;unfinished revolution.&quot; At the beginning, you had your camera confiscated, is that right?
MATTHEW O&#8217;NEILL: Yeah, we didn&#8217;t know what was going to happen when we got there. And when Jon and I came through the airport, we had a strategy. And I had a little, tiny consumer camera that I took apart, wrapped the camera in my underwear, and put the other pieces in other parts of my luggage, so I&#8217;d looked like a tourist. And Jon, acting sort of as a decoy, had the big camera with the big reporter bag. And we both tried to go through in separate lines. And Jon had his camera taken away. And I had my camera looked at, and as I insisted I was just a tourist, let through.
AMY GOODMAN : Typical tourist with a camera in your underwear.
MATTHEW O&#8217;NEILL: That&#8217;s right. Where else to store it?
AMY GOODMAN : Sharif, as you can—if you can describe, even as we&#8217;re talking now, because you&#8217;re live, you&#8217;re right there. We&#8217;re talking anniversary, going back a year, but this is a revolution that continues. What is happening right now as you look outside?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS : Well, Amy, I was on a march earlier today. There&#8217;s massive marches coming from working-class neighborhoods across Cairo that are still arriving in Tahrir right now. It really is a massive, massive presence, I think a testament to the fact that many believe the goals of the revolution are still unfulfilled. The chants are still the same, of &quot;bread, freedom and social justice.&quot; But one chant that has really—signifies, I think, the clarion call of the revolution is &quot;Down, down with military rule.&quot; That is really the vigorous chant that people say right now, because the Supreme Council of Armed Forces, as Jacquie mentioned, really has cracked down very hard on dissent, and especially in the past three months. They&#8217;ve used live ammunition, birdshot, astonishing amounts of tear gas on protesters. They have beaten many people. Many are blinded.
And there&#8217;s one man called Ahmed Harara who has really become a symbol of the revolution. He lost his left eye on January 28th in the uprising against Mubarak, from being shot by rubber bullets. On November 19th, in the uprising against the Supreme Council, he lost his right eye. And he&#8217;s now completely blinded. And he&#8217;s become really a symbol of this ongoing struggle against the military here in Egypt.
AMY GOODMAN : Jon, you have been covering revolutions for years, I dare say decades, Jon Alpert, one of the leading documentarians of our time. How did the Egyptian revolution—how do you fit it into this story?
JON ALPERT : I&#8217;ve seen good revolutions, I&#8217;ve seen bad revolutions. I like seeing successful revolutions. And those 18 days showed us that when people band together, their strength is astonishing. And they moved an immovable object that people said couldn&#8217;t budge. And they moved it. That doesn&#8217;t mean the work is done, but it&#8217;s really exciting. And I&#8217;m—I think—we also really admire Sharif and his family, the commitment, what they&#8217;ve done to educate us about the revolution. And I&#8217;m just curious, Sharif. You could have come back. You could have come back with us. Jacquie and Sharif chose to stay, but you&#8217;re still there, Sharif, at some danger to yourself. And why? Would you tell us what&#8217;s inside you that makes you want to stay there? Why did you change your life? And what did the revolution do to you?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS : Well, I think it—it gave me hope in my country, one that I grew up in here, where I grew up really under one president, with really no hope for change, and seeing millions of fellow citizens come to the streets, most of them much braver than myself. Many of them have died. Many of them have been injured. I&#8217;ve had friends who have lost eyes. I&#8217;ve seen people killed in front of me. And what&#8217;s amazing, I think, about this revolution and is really inspiring is when there is violence against protests, more people come in solidarity to the protests. They don&#8217;t run away. Actually, more people come to defend this right of dissent. And so, it&#8217;s been a very incredible year for me to rediscover a country that I grew up in. And I am very inspired every day by struggles that continue on the streets, in the labor movement, in the media. And it still has a long way to go, but I&#8217;m very, very confident of eventual success. It may take a long time, but I don&#8217;t think people will ever back down again here for a while to come.
AMY GOODMAN : Sharif Abdel Kouddous, I want to thank you very much for being with us and for bringing us the story of your country as it unfolds. Sharif joining us from Cairo, Egypt. And thank you so much to Jon Alpert, to Matt O&#8217;Neill and to Jacquie Soohen, who co-produced the new HBO documentary, In Tahrir Square: 18 Days of Egypt&#8217;s Unfinished Revolution . It airs tonight at 8:00 Eastern Standard Time on HBO . Tell your friends. And I look forward to moderating a panel with you as we watch it live on HBO tonight. For folks in New York, at 87 Lafayette Street at 7:00, join us for a very interesting discussion. Sharif will be joining us from Egypt. NERMEENSHAIKH: Sharif, I want to turn back to some of your original reports that first aired on Democracy Now! during the Egyptian revolution last year.

SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS: In the middle of Tahrir, there’s a patch of grass where people have spent the night here for days. They’ve camped out. You can see some tents. Many have just slept out into the open. There’s rugs. And even though tens of thousands have been here refusing to leave Tahrir Square, there’s very little trash around. People are still picking up. And they are resolute. There’s people handing out water. There’s people handing out food. They’ve kept the place organized and clean. People are so determined to use this as their protest space here in Cairo.

SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS: We’re in an alleyway around the corner from Tahrir. And right over here is the hospital where many wounded are being cared for. [...] Inside this hospital, we see many wounded, different kinds of injuries—broken bones, broken hands, broken legs, many head injuries from rock throwing. And over here there’s a whole section for medical supplies that have been brought in. Some have been—many have been donated from people coming in to support this movement and support the struggle against Mubarak’s regime. It is quite a well-functioning clinic, but many, many have been wounded.

NERMEENSHAIKH: The protests continued to grow in Tahrir Square, leading up to Hosni Mubarak’s resignation.

SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS: So, I’m standing on a stage here, one of the many stages here in Tahrir. There’s just a sea of people behind me, as you can see. They’re giving the peace sign. They’re giving a peace sign for freedom. They’re waiting for Mubarak to leave. There’s electricity in the air tonight. And you can see Tahrir is just packed with people. Shoulder to shoulder they’re standing.

HADLI: My name is Hadli, and I’m one of these people who are here to support the roses that came up in the Egyptian soil. And we’re here to protect them and to protect the revolution. And I’m one of the believers that we should never have any new leaders. The people is the leader. The young people are the leaders.

AMYGOODMAN:Democracy Now!'s Sharif Abdel Kouddous is the central character in the new HBO documentary, _In Tahrir Square: 18 Days of Egypt's Unfinished Revolution_. The film chronicles the uprising through the reporting of Sharif and looks at what the protest meant for Sharif’s uncle, Mohamed Abdel Quddoos, a longtime Egyptian dissident who was arrested dozens of times by the Mubarak regime. This is an excerpt from the documentary that’s airing tonight, recorded as Sharif reported near Tahrir.

SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS: There’s the sound of gunfire in the air. The military has fired shots. The army is stationed in tanks just at the foot of the bridge. It’s really surreal to see this part of Cairo look like this. The Mubarak forces seem to be pulling back. They’re running back. People are cheering. They’re cheering as they retreat.

PROTESTER 1: [translated] I have a right to elect someone who will represent me in parliament, not someone who rules with thugs.

PROTESTER 2: This country should change! This is enough, enough playing games with us! We need freedom!

AMYGOODMAN: An excerpt from the new HBO documentary, In Tahrir Square: 18 Days of Egypt’s Unfinished Revolution. The film premieres tonight on HBO2 at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. The film was produced by Jon Alpert, Matt O’Neill of DCTV, Downtown Community Television, as well as Jacquie Soohen of Big Noise Films. Jacquie spent much of the past year in Egypt. All three filmmakers are joining us here in New York, with Sharif Abdel Kouddous himself in Cairo.

I want to start with Sharif in Cairo. Sharif, the experience of being covered covering the revolution?

SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS: Well, it was interesting. It certainly didn’t make things easier, but I think it really helped me also come to terms with how the revolution was affecting me personally as an Egyptian citizen, to, while I was covering the revolution, also kind of look within myself and how it was affecting myself. And you see at the end of the movie, I kind of break down and cry on the last day when Mubarak steps down. So, it was an interesting experience for me, but it was great having Jon and Matt and Jacquie here with me.

AMYGOODMAN: Jon Alpert, talk about why you chose to do this documentary, to head to Egypt and cover Sharif covering the revolution.

JONALPERT: Well, actually Sheila Nevins of HBO is a fan of Democracy Now!, and she was watching Democracy Now!, saw Sharif and said, "Oh, my goodness, this is a really charismatic, interesting, intelligent person," and called—sort of put together a dream team of me, Matt, Jacquie and Pat McMahon, the editor, and said, "Why don’t you guys try to capture what’s going on by following Sharif?"

AMYGOODMAN: Jacquie, as you look at these images right now, you were right there in the thick of things, when the camels moved in, when the thugs were attacking those in Tahrir. Talk about that experience as you were holding the camera.

JACQUIESOOHEN: It was amazing to be in a place where I had been years before and see what was going on. You could never have imagined what happened in the streets those days. But the most amazing thing, I think, was the feeling of being in Tahrir Square, which is what the film captures, I think is what it does best. And that’s what people are celebrating today, and celebrating with the idea that this revolution hasn’t stopped, it’s continuing. And the violence that we saw in January and February was intense. But what has happened since, like Sharif mentioned, in October and November and December, it’s gotten even worse. And people are still out in the streets. They’re still fighting. Tahrir lives on.

AMYGOODMAN: Thus, Matt, the subtitle about the "unfinished revolution." At the beginning, you had your camera confiscated, is that right?

MATTHEW O’NEILL: Yeah, we didn’t know what was going to happen when we got there. And when Jon and I came through the airport, we had a strategy. And I had a little, tiny consumer camera that I took apart, wrapped the camera in my underwear, and put the other pieces in other parts of my luggage, so I’d looked like a tourist. And Jon, acting sort of as a decoy, had the big camera with the big reporter bag. And we both tried to go through in separate lines. And Jon had his camera taken away. And I had my camera looked at, and as I insisted I was just a tourist, let through.

AMYGOODMAN: Typical tourist with a camera in your underwear.

MATTHEW O’NEILL: That’s right. Where else to store it?

AMYGOODMAN: Sharif, as you can—if you can describe, even as we’re talking now, because you’re live, you’re right there. We’re talking anniversary, going back a year, but this is a revolution that continues. What is happening right now as you look outside?

SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS: Well, Amy, I was on a march earlier today. There’s massive marches coming from working-class neighborhoods across Cairo that are still arriving in Tahrir right now. It really is a massive, massive presence, I think a testament to the fact that many believe the goals of the revolution are still unfulfilled. The chants are still the same, of "bread, freedom and social justice." But one chant that has really—signifies, I think, the clarion call of the revolution is "Down, down with military rule." That is really the vigorous chant that people say right now, because the Supreme Council of Armed Forces, as Jacquie mentioned, really has cracked down very hard on dissent, and especially in the past three months. They’ve used live ammunition, birdshot, astonishing amounts of tear gas on protesters. They have beaten many people. Many are blinded.

And there’s one man called Ahmed Harara who has really become a symbol of the revolution. He lost his left eye on January 28th in the uprising against Mubarak, from being shot by rubber bullets. On November 19th, in the uprising against the Supreme Council, he lost his right eye. And he’s now completely blinded. And he’s become really a symbol of this ongoing struggle against the military here in Egypt.

AMYGOODMAN: Jon, you have been covering revolutions for years, I dare say decades, Jon Alpert, one of the leading documentarians of our time. How did the Egyptian revolution—how do you fit it into this story?

JONALPERT: I’ve seen good revolutions, I’ve seen bad revolutions. I like seeing successful revolutions. And those 18 days showed us that when people band together, their strength is astonishing. And they moved an immovable object that people said couldn’t budge. And they moved it. That doesn’t mean the work is done, but it’s really exciting. And I’m—I think—we also really admire Sharif and his family, the commitment, what they’ve done to educate us about the revolution. And I’m just curious, Sharif. You could have come back. You could have come back with us. Jacquie and Sharif chose to stay, but you’re still there, Sharif, at some danger to yourself. And why? Would you tell us what’s inside you that makes you want to stay there? Why did you change your life? And what did the revolution do to you?

SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS: Well, I think it—it gave me hope in my country, one that I grew up in here, where I grew up really under one president, with really no hope for change, and seeing millions of fellow citizens come to the streets, most of them much braver than myself. Many of them have died. Many of them have been injured. I’ve had friends who have lost eyes. I’ve seen people killed in front of me. And what’s amazing, I think, about this revolution and is really inspiring is when there is violence against protests, more people come in solidarity to the protests. They don’t run away. Actually, more people come to defend this right of dissent. And so, it’s been a very incredible year for me to rediscover a country that I grew up in. And I am very inspired every day by struggles that continue on the streets, in the labor movement, in the media. And it still has a long way to go, but I’m very, very confident of eventual success. It may take a long time, but I don’t think people will ever back down again here for a while to come.

AMYGOODMAN: Sharif Abdel Kouddous, I want to thank you very much for being with us and for bringing us the story of your country as it unfolds. Sharif joining us from Cairo, Egypt. And thank you so much to Jon Alpert, to Matt O’Neill and to Jacquie Soohen, who co-produced the new HBO documentary, In Tahrir Square: 18 Days of Egypt’s Unfinished Revolution. It airs tonight at 8:00 Eastern Standard Time on HBO. Tell your friends. And I look forward to moderating a panel with you as we watch it live on HBO tonight. For folks in New York, at 87 Lafayette Street at 7:00, join us for a very interesting discussion. Sharif will be joining us from Egypt.

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Wed, 25 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0500New York Times Coverage of Media Crackdown on Occupy Wall Street Profiles Democracy Now!'s Ryan Devereauxhttp://www.democracynow.org/blog/2012/1/3/the_new_york_times_story_of_media_crackdown_on_occupy_wall_street_profiles_democracy_nows_ryan_devereaux
tag:democracynow.org,2012-01-03:blog/2b669c The article, &quot;The Rules on News Coverage Are Clear, but the Police Keep Pushing,&quot; in today&#8217;s issue of The New York Times, outlines how New York police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, should do more to ensure that his officers “respect the public’s right to know about these events and the media’s right of access to report.”
It cites Democracy Now!&#8217;s Ryan Devereaux as &quot;Exhibit 1A that all is not well.&quot;:
On Dec. 17, Mr. Devereaux covered a demonstration at Duarte Square on Canal Street for “Democracy Now!,” a news program carried on 1,000 stations. Ragamuffin demonstrators surged and the police pushed back. A linebacker-size officer grabbed the collar of Mr. Devereaux, who wore an ID identifying him as a reporter. The cop jammed a fist into his throat, turning Mr. Devereaux into a de facto battering ram to push back protesters.
“I yelled, ‘I’m a journalist!’ and he kept shoving his fist and yelling to his men, ‘Push, boys!’ ”
Eventually, with curses and threats to arrest Mr. Devereaux, the officer relaxed his grip.
You don’t have to take his word. An Associated Press photograph shows this uniformed fellow grinding a meat-hook fist into the larynx of Mr. Devereaux, who is about 5 feet 5 inches. A video, easily found online, shows an officer blocking a photographer for The New York Times at the World Financial Center, jumping to put his face in front of the camera as demonstrators are arrested in the background.
Click here to read the complete article in The New York Times.
The article, "The Rules on News Coverage Are Clear, but the Police Keep Pushing," in today’s issue of The New York Times, outlines how New York police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, should do more to ensure that his officers “respect the public’s right to know about these events and the media’s right of access to report.”

It cites Democracy Now!’s Ryan Devereaux as "Exhibit 1A that all is not well.":

On Dec. 17, Mr. Devereaux covered a demonstration at Duarte Square on Canal Street for “Democracy Now!,” a news program carried on 1,000 stations. Ragamuffin demonstrators surged and the police pushed back. A linebacker-size officer grabbed the collar of Mr. Devereaux, who wore an ID identifying him as a reporter. The cop jammed a fist into his throat, turning Mr. Devereaux into a de facto battering ram to push back protesters.

“I yelled, ‘I’m a journalist!’ and he kept shoving his fist and yelling to his men, ‘Push, boys!’ ”

Eventually, with curses and threats to arrest Mr. Devereaux, the officer relaxed his grip.

You don’t have to take his word. An Associated Press photograph shows this uniformed fellow grinding a meat-hook fist into the larynx of Mr. Devereaux, who is about 5 feet 5 inches. A video, easily found online, shows an officer blocking a photographer for The New York Times at the World Financial Center, jumping to put his face in front of the camera as demonstrators are arrested in the background.

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Tue, 03 Jan 2012 10:29:00 -0500Scott Olsen, U.S. Vet Wounded at Occupy Oakland, on Recovery, Protests, Iraq and Bradley Manninghttp://www.democracynow.org/2011/12/30/scott_olsen_us_vet_wounded_at
tag:democracynow.org,2011-12-30:en/story/321334 JUAN GONZALEZ : As we broadcast our last show of 2011, we turn to someone who became one of the faces of the global Occupy movement. His name is Scott Olsen. While his name made headlines around the globe this past year, his voice has seldom been heard.
Just over two months ago, on October 25th, the 24-year-old Iraq war veteran was taking part in a protest in defense of the Occupy Oakland encampment. By the time the night ended, Olsen was hospitalized in critical condition with a fractured skull and brain swelling. He had been shot in the head by a police projectile while the police were firing bean bags and tear gas to clear the Occupy protesters.
At the time of the shooting Olsen, who served two deployments in Iraq, was wearing military fatigues and a Veterans for Peace T-shirt. Moments after he was shot, police fired a bright flash grenade at a group of Occupy protesters who attempted to help treat him. Soon after that, the protesters carried him away as blood streamed down his face.
PROTESTER 1: Medic!
PROTESTER 2: We need a medic! Medic! Medic!
PROTESTER 3: What happened? What happened?
PROTESTER 2: He got [bleep] shot!
PROTESTER 3: What&#8217;s your name? What&#8217;s your name?
PROTESTER 2: What&#8217;s your name?
PROTESTER 4: Dude, wake up!
PROTESTER 3: What&#8217;s your name?
PROTESTER 4: What&#8217;s your name?
PROTESTER 5: Can you say anything? Medic!
AMY GOODMAN : Video and images from that evening in Oakland were soon broadcast around the world. Protests condemning the police use of force were held from New York to the Bay Area. The attack galvanized the Occupy movement in Oakland. Within a week, a general strike temporarily shut down the Oakland ports. Iraq Veterans Against the War, Veterans for Peace condemned the shooting of one of their own members.
But during this time, Scott Olsen remained hospitalized, unable to speak for days. Scott was released from the hospital mid-November, but the recovery process is only just beginning. Scott Olsen now joins us from a studio in San Francisco.
Scott, welcome to Democracy Now! It&#8217;s great to have you with us.
SCOTT OLSEN : Good morning, Amy. It&#8217;s great to be here.
AMY GOODMAN : Do you remember that day, what led up to those moments?
SCOTT OLSEN : Yeah, I remember almost the whole day. After work, I got off at five to six, and I went over to Occupy Oakland because I heard that they needed support over there, that they were—they had been removed from their camp. And then, so I went over there, and I met up with another Veterans for Peace member who I knew already, Josh. He was the one in the Navy blues standing next to me. So I was standing next to him, and then I stepped away for a while, and next thing I know, I&#8217;m on the ground. My left side was turned towards the cops, and that&#8217;s where I got hit, right here.
And I woke up sooner on the ground and was being carried away by all these people. And I didn&#8217;t want to—necessarily want them to take me away, because I didn&#8217;t think that I was injured all that bad at the time. So, once they asked me my name over and over, and I couldn&#8217;t muster up an answer of any sort, I knew that that wasn&#8217;t the case, and I knew that they should take me away.
AMY GOODMAN : When we couldn&#8217;t talk to you, Scott, I interviewed Jesse Palmer , the member—one of the other members of Occupy Oakland. And I wanted to play for you his description of what happened that night that your skull was fractured.
JESSE PALMER : It was about 7:45. People had marched at 5:00, and by the point that the first tear gas and concussion grenades were used, people had been marching for over two hours. At the time, there was a large group of people standing at 14th and Broadway, which is the intersection right in downtown Oakland closest to Oscar Grant Plaza. The police had given an order to disperse, but there was no aggressive behavior towards the police. It was basically just a standoff. People were standing around.
All of a sudden, you know, in just an instant, with no real warning, concussion grenades went off and tear gas canisters went off all around us. I was right in the middle of the intersection, and it was very shocking, because you just heard the explosions in every direction all around you. Most of the crowd I was with proceeded north on Broadway, but people went in every direction. The other two intersections, people left.
At that time, I didn’t see that Scott had been struck. And in fact the tear gas makes it very hard for you to see. You can’t see. So people fell back about a half a block down Broadway, then somebody said that somebody had been hurt. And so, a number of people ran back up into the tear gas. And he was lying on the sidewalk, and there were a couple of medics already with him, and they said, &quot;We need to get him farther out,&quot; because it was very very unsafe at that location. And so, we picked him up, and we carried him about a block, around the corner from where they could safely work on him.
AMY GOODMAN : What exactly was his condition as you tried, with others, to carry him?
JESSE PALMER : So, we picked him up, and my initial—I told him, &quot;You&#8217;re going to be OK. My name’s Jesse. Can you tell me your name?&quot; because I knew it was a terrifying situation, and I wanted to comfort him. But he didn&#8217;t respond at all. His eyes were open. He just stared blankly. And that was when I realized. You know, there was blood coming out of—it was a little hard to say, but his eyes, his mouth, his nose, there was a lot of blood on his face. And it was a terrifying, you know, moment. I mean, he was alive, and we didn’t know how badly he was hurt. And he didn&#8217;t speak back to me. And I tried a few times, because I thought, &quot;Oh, he&#8217;ll be able to speak back.&quot; And he never spoke. We got him around the sidewalk, and then there were—the medics said they were EMTs, and they had experience. So that was when I left. But he—yeah, he was seriously hurt.
AMY GOODMAN : That was Jesse Palmer describing what happened that night. Now Oakland officials say that they&#8217;re hiring a team of—or they&#8217;ve appointed a team of outside investigators who will look into the use of force by police after they cleared the city&#8217;s Occupy encampment. Mayor Jean Quan was in Washington, D.C., at the time of the raid and the evening protest that took place, but she&#8217;s reviewed the video. And among those who are going to be included in this are the LAPD Deputy Chief Mike Hillmann, San Jose Deputy Chief Don Anders, U.S. Coast Guard Captain Richard Cashdollar, the former executive director of the public safety for Mobile, Alabama. Scott Olsen, does that satisfy you, a commission being appointed to investigate the violence at Occupy Oakland?
SCOTT OLSEN : Well, they can appoint all the commissions they may want. I expect the truth to come out from them, but I&#8217;m not too hopeful that a—well, I mean, look at the makeup of the—this new committee that they appointed. They&#8217;re all former police. And we know how that has sometimes worked in the past. You know, they&#8217;re an all-boys club, and I don&#8217;t know if they&#8217;ll be subjective or objective.
JUAN GONZALEZ : Scott, I&#8217;d like to get a better sense of you and how you got to Occupy Wall Street. How long had you been there? What brought you there? And my understanding is you had also previously been also at—in Wisconsin, in the protests in Wisconsin. Could you talk about that?
SCOTT OLSEN : Sure. Well, early in the year, I went up to Madison. I was living a couple hours away, and I went up there the day I heard that the senators left the state. That was the budget repair bill. So I was up there for a couple weekends, even while I had a job. And I went up there, and I participated in it. And when I initially heard about Occupy coming up, before it started, it seemed like something that might have the same type of energy involved, and I thought it was almost like a continuation of what happened at Wisconsin. And I wanted to get involved with it and make it successful. So that—so that&#8217;s what got me involved. And I was here at San Francisco&#8217;s first Occupy on September 17th, I think, and then a couple weeks later, I started camping almost full-time.
JUAN GONZALEZ : And how soon after you returned from Iraq did you start getting involved in the protest movement? And how did your two tours of duty in Iraq influence you or affect your thinking on these issues?
SCOTT OLSEN : Well, I mean, the Wisconsin protests that I talked about earlier were probably my first protests that I went to of that nature. But after I got out of the military, spent—I would spend a lot of my time just getting my life together, trying to get a—build my life, get a job. And I spent a lot of time educating myself and doing a lot of reading also.
AMY GOODMAN : We&#8217;re going to break and then come back to this discussion. Scott Olsen is with us on this last 2011 broadcast of Democracy Now! , served two tours of duty in Iraq, was born in Wisconsin, where he grew up, member of Veterans for Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War. He&#8217;s wearing a neck brace and a headband. He was hit by a projectile on October 25th, standing in front of police at Occupy Oakland. After we finish speaking with Scott, we&#8217;ll be talking with Richard Cohen about the massive protests that are rocking Moscow—Stephen Cohen, professor of Russian studies at New York University. This is Democracy Now! , democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report . Back in a minute.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN : Our guest is Scott Olsen, served two tours of duty in Iraq, grew up in Wisconsin, went home to Wisconsin, participated in the Madison protests, and then came out to the Bay Area, where he was involved in Occupy San Francisco and then went to Occupy Oakland, where he was hit by a police projectile on October 25th which fractured his skull. Actually, Scott, do you know who shot that projectile at you?
SCOTT OLSEN : I don&#8217;t. The question is up in the air. I don&#8217;t know particularly who, but there is no doubt that it came from the police, because of the—where I was standing. I was standing with one side, my left side, towards the police, and there was a small gap right there. And I&#8217;m not sure who it was, and no one has come upfront with that.
AMY GOODMAN : I mean, one of the more horrifying pictures at that time, when people, who didn&#8217;t know you, came up to you after the pepper spray, tear gas cleared, and they saw someone was down, you were laying right in front of the police line. The police didn&#8217;t break the line to help you. You were laying there bloodied. But young people came back, and they were asking who you were. They were trying to pick you up. And then they were hit by a flashbang grenade. So they had to back up, because they were so shocked by it. And then they came back again to try to help you and then carried you away. Do you remember—this is what we see in the video and the photos at the time. Do you remember that period?
SCOTT OLSEN : I don&#8217;t—I don&#8217;t really remember the flashbang going off or that. I remember people coming and then going and then coming back again. But I mean—but what they did with that is just unbelievable, that they would terrorize people from coming to help me. And the police themselves were supposed to be providing medical care for when they use chemical agents.
JUAN GONZALEZ : Scott, I&#8217;d like to get back again to the time that you spent in Iraq, because we so often see these sensational events, but we don&#8217;t really get an idea of what brings people to make the decision to participate in them or to stand up in one way or another. What was it about your experience in Iraq that made you decide you had to go to—first to Wisconsin, your first protest, as you said, that you had ever participated in, and then to Occupy Oakland?
SCOTT OLSEN : Well, basically, it was just—I didn&#8217;t really—I went over there, and I didn&#8217;t see what we were doing as a nation, as a military. I didn&#8217;t see that we were actually helping these people. I wasn&#8217;t convinced. And it was a slow—you know, a slow process throughout my time of being there. I can&#8217;t really point to any one or two specific incidents which would clarify that, but—
AMY GOODMAN : You—
SCOTT OLSEN : Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN : You went back. You served two tours of duty.
SCOTT OLSEN : Yeah, yeah, I went—I went again. And at this time, I was mostly, more or less, opposed to the war, but I thought it would be best to stick with the Marines that I was with and that I had under my charge and that I was responsible for at the time.
JUAN GONZALEZ : And what about the other—your fellow soldiers in the units that you were stationed with? How did they feel about the war?
SCOTT OLSEN : You know, it&#8217;s really not a topic that comes up much very often among active-duty soldiers or Marines. It wasn&#8217;t something that I talked with my peers with. We were there, and we were there to do a job. And that was kind of the—you know, the mindset.
AMY GOODMAN : Scott, as we travel around the country to Occupy encampments, there are veterans everywhere in these encampments. One of the Iraq War vets that you have been standing up for, speaking out for, is Bradley Manning. You, too, were interested in computers. Can you talk about whether you knew him, why Bradley Manning is important to you, who is now facing a court-martial, facing life in prison, possibly death, accused for leaking documents and videos when he was in Iraq, uploading them to WikiLeaks, the whistleblower website?
SCOTT OLSEN : Yeah. Bradley Manning, I didn&#8217;t know him until he hit the news. And as soon as I heard about him, as soon as I saw the documents that he leaked, or allegedly leaked, I could see myself almost in his shoes, because I—you know, I, when I was in the Marine Corps, I had access to many of the same types of files. And, you know, if I wanted to, I could have gone up and got them, and—but I didn&#8217;t see any that, you know, were particularly—pointed to any particular crimes. But he came across a lot. And what he did is—that&#8217;s true heroism. I mean, he faced up against a real enemy. And I think that those documents also tie in with what we are seeing today with this global awakening, with all this information, has been another pile on top of the tinder that&#8217;s sparked Occupy, that&#8217;s sparked the Arab Spring. It&#8217;s played into that, as well.
JUAN GONZALEZ : And Scott, in the days after you were so seriously injured, you became the face of the Occupy movement around the country and around the world. Were you surprised by the outpouring, the rage of your fellow occupiers at what had happened, and also the attention that was given to your case?
SCOTT OLSEN : Well, kind of was surprised, because I&#8217;m not the first case of police brutality since Occupy, since 10 years ago, since whenever. But I&#8217;m glad that maybe me getting hurt sparked enough attention, and it got people involved to see that there is such a problem, that it is going on and that it continues to go on, even in our country. And I think the fact that it was, you know, me, a veteran, who got hit wearing my uniform took a big toll on people&#8217;s minds. And they thought, you know, this is what we&#8217;re doing to our veterans now. And I think that&#8217;s what was kind of responsible for the outrage a little more.
AMY GOODMAN : IVAW , Iraq Veterans Against the War&#8217;s membership has gone up something like fivefold since being involved with the Occupy movement. We&#8217;re also speaking to you on this last day—the last days of 2011, when most U.S. soldiers are pulled out of Iraq. What are your thoughts about the end of the official war, U.S. involvement in Iraq?
SCOTT OLSEN : Well, the end of it officially, it&#8217;s—
AMY GOODMAN : Looks like we just lost Scott Olsen. He&#8217;s back on.
SCOTT OLSEN : —can&#8217;t help but think, what have we won? Like, what did we win? There&#8217;s nothing—nothing to look back on and think that we were victorious or that anyone benefited anywhere from our involvement in Iraq.
AMY GOODMAN : Scott, in the days after your skull was fractured, you couldn&#8217;t speak. You are wearing a neck brace, a headband. How is your rehabilitation going, and what does it involve?
SCOTT OLSEN : Well, my rehab has been going quite well. The neck brace is because I broke a neck vertebrae when I was injured, and I&#8217;m still recovering from that. And my speech is getting a lot better. I&#8217;ve been going to speech therapy typically once a week. And, you know, I&#8217;m satisfied with the progress I&#8217;ve been making. And I think that I am still recovering, and I will continue to get better, but I do feel very much stronger than when I look back at how I was when I first woke up in the hospital. I&#8217;ve made amazing progress, I think.
JUAN GONZALEZ : And the way that the Oakland police and authorities dealt with the protest, not only on that day, but in subsequent days, trying to clear the—first supporting the protesters, then clearing it, then allowing them back in, then clearing them again. The mayor there, Jean Quan, who has a liberal or even radical history, received a lot criticism for the way she handled the occupation. Your thoughts on how authorities dealt with you?
SCOTT OLSEN : Well, I don&#8217;t think that they&#8217;re respecting—first and foremost, they&#8217;re not respecting our right to assemble and to protest and to redress our government for grievances. They&#8217;re not allowing us to do that. They&#8217;re—by the tactics they&#8217;re using, they are—in effect, they&#8217;re terrorizing some of us from going out at all. You know, you look at me. This is at least the worst that could happen to you if you go out to one of these. And that&#8217;s a sad statement for our country.
AMY GOODMAN : Finally, Scott, as you sit here talking to us, as you are being rehabilitated here, you could be any veteran of the war, any soldier who has returned who&#8217;s been injured, but you were not injured in Iraq. You were injured here in the United States after you returned home. What are your plans, after all that you&#8217;ve been through, as a Marine in Iraq, increasingly becoming antiwar, coming to this country, then participating in the protests in Wisconsin, where your family lives, then coming out to the Bay Area? Has it changed your path in life?
SCOTT OLSEN : Well, it certainly has. It&#8217;s made me who I am today. Everything from being in the Marine Corps to being involved with Occupy to going through this injury has all made me who I am today. And I&#8217;m going to use that in the future to effect even more change and to—you know, I look forward to being a part of the 99 percent here in 2012, being a part of IVAW here in 2012. But I&#8217;m also maybe looking forward to returning to work part-time and maybe starting my old life again soon and see how that goes for me.
AMY GOODMAN : Scott Olsen, thanks so much for being with us. Scott Olsen, a Marine, served two tours of duty in Iraq, came back to this country, on October 25th was standing in front of police at Occupy Oakland and was hit by a projectile. It fractured his skull. Thanks so much for being with us, and best to you.
This is Democracy Now! Protests are rocking Moscow in Russia. When we come back, we&#8217;ll speak with Stephen Cohen, Russian studies professor at New York University, author of numerous books, including Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War . Stay with us. JUANGONZALEZ: As we broadcast our last show of 2011, we turn to someone who became one of the faces of the global Occupy movement. His name is Scott Olsen. While his name made headlines around the globe this past year, his voice has seldom been heard.

Just over two months ago, on October 25th, the 24-year-old Iraq war veteran was taking part in a protest in defense of the Occupy Oakland encampment. By the time the night ended, Olsen was hospitalized in critical condition with a fractured skull and brain swelling. He had been shot in the head by a police projectile while the police were firing bean bags and tear gas to clear the Occupy protesters.

At the time of the shooting Olsen, who served two deployments in Iraq, was wearing military fatigues and a Veterans for Peace T-shirt. Moments after he was shot, police fired a bright flash grenade at a group of Occupy protesters who attempted to help treat him. Soon after that, the protesters carried him away as blood streamed down his face.

PROTESTER 1: Medic!

PROTESTER 2: We need a medic! Medic! Medic!

PROTESTER 3: What happened? What happened?

PROTESTER 2: He got [bleep] shot!

PROTESTER 3: What’s your name? What’s your name?

PROTESTER 2: What’s your name?

PROTESTER 4: Dude, wake up!

PROTESTER 3: What’s your name?

PROTESTER 4: What’s your name?

PROTESTER 5: Can you say anything? Medic!

AMYGOODMAN: Video and images from that evening in Oakland were soon broadcast around the world. Protests condemning the police use of force were held from New York to the Bay Area. The attack galvanized the Occupy movement in Oakland. Within a week, a general strike temporarily shut down the Oakland ports. Iraq Veterans Against the War, Veterans for Peace condemned the shooting of one of their own members.

But during this time, Scott Olsen remained hospitalized, unable to speak for days. Scott was released from the hospital mid-November, but the recovery process is only just beginning. Scott Olsen now joins us from a studio in San Francisco.

Scott, welcome to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us.

SCOTTOLSEN: Good morning, Amy. It’s great to be here.

AMYGOODMAN: Do you remember that day, what led up to those moments?

SCOTTOLSEN: Yeah, I remember almost the whole day. After work, I got off at five to six, and I went over to Occupy Oakland because I heard that they needed support over there, that they were—they had been removed from their camp. And then, so I went over there, and I met up with another Veterans for Peace member who I knew already, Josh. He was the one in the Navy blues standing next to me. So I was standing next to him, and then I stepped away for a while, and next thing I know, I’m on the ground. My left side was turned towards the cops, and that’s where I got hit, right here.

And I woke up sooner on the ground and was being carried away by all these people. And I didn’t want to—necessarily want them to take me away, because I didn’t think that I was injured all that bad at the time. So, once they asked me my name over and over, and I couldn’t muster up an answer of any sort, I knew that that wasn’t the case, and I knew that they should take me away.

AMYGOODMAN: When we couldn’t talk to you, Scott, I interviewed Jesse Palmer, the member—one of the other members of Occupy Oakland. And I wanted to play for you his description of what happened that night that your skull was fractured.

JESSEPALMER: It was about 7:45. People had marched at 5:00, and by the point that the first tear gas and concussion grenades were used, people had been marching for over two hours. At the time, there was a large group of people standing at 14th and Broadway, which is the intersection right in downtown Oakland closest to Oscar Grant Plaza. The police had given an order to disperse, but there was no aggressive behavior towards the police. It was basically just a standoff. People were standing around.

All of a sudden, you know, in just an instant, with no real warning, concussion grenades went off and tear gas canisters went off all around us. I was right in the middle of the intersection, and it was very shocking, because you just heard the explosions in every direction all around you. Most of the crowd I was with proceeded north on Broadway, but people went in every direction. The other two intersections, people left.

At that time, I didn’t see that Scott had been struck. And in fact the tear gas makes it very hard for you to see. You can’t see. So people fell back about a half a block down Broadway, then somebody said that somebody had been hurt. And so, a number of people ran back up into the tear gas. And he was lying on the sidewalk, and there were a couple of medics already with him, and they said, "We need to get him farther out," because it was very very unsafe at that location. And so, we picked him up, and we carried him about a block, around the corner from where they could safely work on him.

AMYGOODMAN: What exactly was his condition as you tried, with others, to carry him?

JESSEPALMER: So, we picked him up, and my initial—I told him, "You’re going to be OK. My name’s Jesse. Can you tell me your name?" because I knew it was a terrifying situation, and I wanted to comfort him. But he didn’t respond at all. His eyes were open. He just stared blankly. And that was when I realized. You know, there was blood coming out of—it was a little hard to say, but his eyes, his mouth, his nose, there was a lot of blood on his face. And it was a terrifying, you know, moment. I mean, he was alive, and we didn’t know how badly he was hurt. And he didn’t speak back to me. And I tried a few times, because I thought, "Oh, he’ll be able to speak back." And he never spoke. We got him around the sidewalk, and then there were—the medics said they were EMTs, and they had experience. So that was when I left. But he—yeah, he was seriously hurt.

AMYGOODMAN: That was Jesse Palmer describing what happened that night. Now Oakland officials say that they’re hiring a team of—or they’ve appointed a team of outside investigators who will look into the use of force by police after they cleared the city’s Occupy encampment. Mayor Jean Quan was in Washington, D.C., at the time of the raid and the evening protest that took place, but she’s reviewed the video. And among those who are going to be included in this are the LAPD Deputy Chief Mike Hillmann, San Jose Deputy Chief Don Anders, U.S. Coast Guard Captain Richard Cashdollar, the former executive director of the public safety for Mobile, Alabama. Scott Olsen, does that satisfy you, a commission being appointed to investigate the violence at Occupy Oakland?

SCOTTOLSEN: Well, they can appoint all the commissions they may want. I expect the truth to come out from them, but I’m not too hopeful that a—well, I mean, look at the makeup of the—this new committee that they appointed. They’re all former police. And we know how that has sometimes worked in the past. You know, they’re an all-boys club, and I don’t know if they’ll be subjective or objective.

JUANGONZALEZ: Scott, I’d like to get a better sense of you and how you got to Occupy Wall Street. How long had you been there? What brought you there? And my understanding is you had also previously been also at—in Wisconsin, in the protests in Wisconsin. Could you talk about that?

SCOTTOLSEN: Sure. Well, early in the year, I went up to Madison. I was living a couple hours away, and I went up there the day I heard that the senators left the state. That was the budget repair bill. So I was up there for a couple weekends, even while I had a job. And I went up there, and I participated in it. And when I initially heard about Occupy coming up, before it started, it seemed like something that might have the same type of energy involved, and I thought it was almost like a continuation of what happened at Wisconsin. And I wanted to get involved with it and make it successful. So that—so that’s what got me involved. And I was here at San Francisco’s first Occupy on September 17th, I think, and then a couple weeks later, I started camping almost full-time.

JUANGONZALEZ: And how soon after you returned from Iraq did you start getting involved in the protest movement? And how did your two tours of duty in Iraq influence you or affect your thinking on these issues?

SCOTTOLSEN: Well, I mean, the Wisconsin protests that I talked about earlier were probably my first protests that I went to of that nature. But after I got out of the military, spent—I would spend a lot of my time just getting my life together, trying to get a—build my life, get a job. And I spent a lot of time educating myself and doing a lot of reading also.

AMYGOODMAN: We’re going to break and then come back to this discussion. Scott Olsen is with us on this last 2011 broadcast of Democracy Now!, served two tours of duty in Iraq, was born in Wisconsin, where he grew up, member of Veterans for Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War. He’s wearing a neck brace and a headband. He was hit by a projectile on October 25th, standing in front of police at Occupy Oakland. After we finish speaking with Scott, we’ll be talking with Richard Cohen about the massive protests that are rocking Moscow—Stephen Cohen, professor of Russian studies at New York University. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. Back in a minute.

[break]

AMYGOODMAN: Our guest is Scott Olsen, served two tours of duty in Iraq, grew up in Wisconsin, went home to Wisconsin, participated in the Madison protests, and then came out to the Bay Area, where he was involved in Occupy San Francisco and then went to Occupy Oakland, where he was hit by a police projectile on October 25th which fractured his skull. Actually, Scott, do you know who shot that projectile at you?

SCOTTOLSEN: I don’t. The question is up in the air. I don’t know particularly who, but there is no doubt that it came from the police, because of the—where I was standing. I was standing with one side, my left side, towards the police, and there was a small gap right there. And I’m not sure who it was, and no one has come upfront with that.

AMYGOODMAN: I mean, one of the more horrifying pictures at that time, when people, who didn’t know you, came up to you after the pepper spray, tear gas cleared, and they saw someone was down, you were laying right in front of the police line. The police didn’t break the line to help you. You were laying there bloodied. But young people came back, and they were asking who you were. They were trying to pick you up. And then they were hit by a flashbang grenade. So they had to back up, because they were so shocked by it. And then they came back again to try to help you and then carried you away. Do you remember—this is what we see in the video and the photos at the time. Do you remember that period?

SCOTTOLSEN: I don’t—I don’t really remember the flashbang going off or that. I remember people coming and then going and then coming back again. But I mean—but what they did with that is just unbelievable, that they would terrorize people from coming to help me. And the police themselves were supposed to be providing medical care for when they use chemical agents.

JUANGONZALEZ: Scott, I’d like to get back again to the time that you spent in Iraq, because we so often see these sensational events, but we don’t really get an idea of what brings people to make the decision to participate in them or to stand up in one way or another. What was it about your experience in Iraq that made you decide you had to go to—first to Wisconsin, your first protest, as you said, that you had ever participated in, and then to Occupy Oakland?

SCOTTOLSEN: Well, basically, it was just—I didn’t really—I went over there, and I didn’t see what we were doing as a nation, as a military. I didn’t see that we were actually helping these people. I wasn’t convinced. And it was a slow—you know, a slow process throughout my time of being there. I can’t really point to any one or two specific incidents which would clarify that, but—

AMYGOODMAN: You—

SCOTTOLSEN: Yeah.

AMYGOODMAN: You went back. You served two tours of duty.

SCOTTOLSEN: Yeah, yeah, I went—I went again. And at this time, I was mostly, more or less, opposed to the war, but I thought it would be best to stick with the Marines that I was with and that I had under my charge and that I was responsible for at the time.

JUANGONZALEZ: And what about the other—your fellow soldiers in the units that you were stationed with? How did they feel about the war?

SCOTTOLSEN: You know, it’s really not a topic that comes up much very often among active-duty soldiers or Marines. It wasn’t something that I talked with my peers with. We were there, and we were there to do a job. And that was kind of the—you know, the mindset.

AMYGOODMAN: Scott, as we travel around the country to Occupy encampments, there are veterans everywhere in these encampments. One of the Iraq War vets that you have been standing up for, speaking out for, is Bradley Manning. You, too, were interested in computers. Can you talk about whether you knew him, why Bradley Manning is important to you, who is now facing a court-martial, facing life in prison, possibly death, accused for leaking documents and videos when he was in Iraq, uploading them to WikiLeaks, the whistleblower website?

SCOTTOLSEN: Yeah. Bradley Manning, I didn’t know him until he hit the news. And as soon as I heard about him, as soon as I saw the documents that he leaked, or allegedly leaked, I could see myself almost in his shoes, because I—you know, I, when I was in the Marine Corps, I had access to many of the same types of files. And, you know, if I wanted to, I could have gone up and got them, and—but I didn’t see any that, you know, were particularly—pointed to any particular crimes. But he came across a lot. And what he did is—that’s true heroism. I mean, he faced up against a real enemy. And I think that those documents also tie in with what we are seeing today with this global awakening, with all this information, has been another pile on top of the tinder that’s sparked Occupy, that’s sparked the Arab Spring. It’s played into that, as well.

JUANGONZALEZ: And Scott, in the days after you were so seriously injured, you became the face of the Occupy movement around the country and around the world. Were you surprised by the outpouring, the rage of your fellow occupiers at what had happened, and also the attention that was given to your case?

SCOTTOLSEN: Well, kind of was surprised, because I’m not the first case of police brutality since Occupy, since 10 years ago, since whenever. But I’m glad that maybe me getting hurt sparked enough attention, and it got people involved to see that there is such a problem, that it is going on and that it continues to go on, even in our country. And I think the fact that it was, you know, me, a veteran, who got hit wearing my uniform took a big toll on people’s minds. And they thought, you know, this is what we’re doing to our veterans now. And I think that’s what was kind of responsible for the outrage a little more.

AMYGOODMAN:IVAW, Iraq Veterans Against the War’s membership has gone up something like fivefold since being involved with the Occupy movement. We’re also speaking to you on this last day—the last days of 2011, when most U.S. soldiers are pulled out of Iraq. What are your thoughts about the end of the official war, U.S. involvement in Iraq?

SCOTTOLSEN: Well, the end of it officially, it’s—

AMYGOODMAN: Looks like we just lost Scott Olsen. He’s back on.

SCOTTOLSEN: —can’t help but think, what have we won? Like, what did we win? There’s nothing—nothing to look back on and think that we were victorious or that anyone benefited anywhere from our involvement in Iraq.

AMYGOODMAN: Scott, in the days after your skull was fractured, you couldn’t speak. You are wearing a neck brace, a headband. How is your rehabilitation going, and what does it involve?

SCOTTOLSEN: Well, my rehab has been going quite well. The neck brace is because I broke a neck vertebrae when I was injured, and I’m still recovering from that. And my speech is getting a lot better. I’ve been going to speech therapy typically once a week. And, you know, I’m satisfied with the progress I’ve been making. And I think that I am still recovering, and I will continue to get better, but I do feel very much stronger than when I look back at how I was when I first woke up in the hospital. I’ve made amazing progress, I think.

JUANGONZALEZ: And the way that the Oakland police and authorities dealt with the protest, not only on that day, but in subsequent days, trying to clear the—first supporting the protesters, then clearing it, then allowing them back in, then clearing them again. The mayor there, Jean Quan, who has a liberal or even radical history, received a lot criticism for the way she handled the occupation. Your thoughts on how authorities dealt with you?

SCOTTOLSEN: Well, I don’t think that they’re respecting—first and foremost, they’re not respecting our right to assemble and to protest and to redress our government for grievances. They’re not allowing us to do that. They’re—by the tactics they’re using, they are—in effect, they’re terrorizing some of us from going out at all. You know, you look at me. This is at least the worst that could happen to you if you go out to one of these. And that’s a sad statement for our country.

AMYGOODMAN: Finally, Scott, as you sit here talking to us, as you are being rehabilitated here, you could be any veteran of the war, any soldier who has returned who’s been injured, but you were not injured in Iraq. You were injured here in the United States after you returned home. What are your plans, after all that you’ve been through, as a Marine in Iraq, increasingly becoming antiwar, coming to this country, then participating in the protests in Wisconsin, where your family lives, then coming out to the Bay Area? Has it changed your path in life?

SCOTTOLSEN: Well, it certainly has. It’s made me who I am today. Everything from being in the Marine Corps to being involved with Occupy to going through this injury has all made me who I am today. And I’m going to use that in the future to effect even more change and to—you know, I look forward to being a part of the 99 percent here in 2012, being a part of IVAW here in 2012. But I’m also maybe looking forward to returning to work part-time and maybe starting my old life again soon and see how that goes for me.

AMYGOODMAN: Scott Olsen, thanks so much for being with us. Scott Olsen, a Marine, served two tours of duty in Iraq, came back to this country, on October 25th was standing in front of police at Occupy Oakland and was hit by a projectile. It fractured his skull. Thanks so much for being with us, and best to you.

This is Democracy Now! Protests are rocking Moscow in Russia. When we come back, we’ll speak with Stephen Cohen, Russian studies professor at New York University, author of numerous books, including Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War. Stay with us.